


can i be close to you?

by icedmatchalatte



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Fluff, Light Angst, Love Letters, M/M, Misunderstandings, hallmark romcom-esque love confession(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedmatchalatte/pseuds/icedmatchalatte
Summary: Renjun’s got nothing to lose by putting love letters in his crush’s locker. He gets to anonymously confess his feelings, Jaemin gets a nice ego boost, everybody wins.Except if the locker doesn’t actually belong to Jaemin.Fuck.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 43
Kudos: 243
Collections: NRMFF2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for prompt #11: wrong locker au!
> 
> this took a bit of a turn right around the middle, and some angst was used in the name of Oblivious Pining™
> 
> still, i hope the prompter enjoys it! i had a lot of fun writing this, and between all the slice-of-lifeyness, attempts at humor, and darling cliches, i hope that you get to have fun with it too <3

Senior year for Renjun was supposed to be fairly uneventful. That was, until someone in administration had a bad day, and decided that for the new academic year, all upperclassmen would be changing dorms.

“I don’t get why you’re complaining so much. This place is a whole five minutes closer to the cafeteria, and we have _two_ windows this time,” Donghyuck was swinging his legs in different directions every few seconds, and Renjun almost ate socked feet a couple of times while trying to unpack his suitcases.

“If you hit me with your feet, I swear I’m gonna throw you out of that second window,” Renjun huffed, and Donghyuck stretched further, curling his toes dangerously close to Renjun’s shoulder.

Senior year for Renjun was supposed to be fairly uneventful, until the school decided that an early August afternoon was just prime time for moving heavy boxes across streets and up staircases, and implemented some bastard software in the Housing and Student Life department that made Donghyuck his roommate. _And_ gave Donghyuck the top bunk.

Of course Renjun was aware that he’d get a new roommate after Mark graduated, but out of all the junior and senior boys moving into the new building, he had a few _dozen_ names he’d pick before Donghyuck to share a disgustingly small amount of square feet for ten whole months.

“Don’t get cranky at me just because you lost the opportunity of a lifetime,” Donghyuck jumped down from the top bunk “You know the housing match wasn’t totally random. You could’ve requested him as your roommate,” Renjun threw a notebook in Donghyuck’s direction but he dodged, sticking his tongue out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and he had to turn away to keep Donghyuck from noticing the blush creeping up his face. There were probably a thousand reasons why rooming with Donghyuck was a bad idea, but the fact that he was Mark’s best friend — and thus knew everything Mark did about everyone Mark ever interacted with — was the worst of them all.

It wasn’t like Renjun expected Mark to keep a secret from Donghyuck, but God, he really hadn’t thought that one through.

“Maybe there’s still time? You could fill in a moving request, or something.”

Renjun wanted to chuck another notebook at him. “Shut up and finish unpacking,” but before Donghyuck could keep pushing Renjun’s buttons, there was a knock on their door. They both stood frozen for a moment, because, who under fifty years old visited their neighbors on the moving day, and most importantly, who out of a hundred and twenty busy junior and senior boys in that building would knock before opening an already half open door? At the lack of answer, a head tentatively appeared by the threshold.

“Oh,” the guy’s eyes widened “You’re here. Jaemin!” he shouted, head disappearing back into the corridor “This is their room!”

“Finally,” a huff, but the voice sounded laced with an ever present smile. Unlike the other guy, Jaemin kicked the door open straight away, arms full with a maroon glossy vase. “I can give this back.”

It took Renjun half a second to recover from the shock, and even less for his brain to go on overdrive. Suddenly, it seemed like a rather positive thing that the room had two windows — even if they were on the third floor. How long could a broken leg take to heal?

“What do you mean, give this back?” Donghyuck stared at the duo by the entrance of their room like they had four heads each.

Which, valid. Because Renjun’s senior year was supposed to be fairly uneventful, if not for his long time crush kicking his room door open only hours after moving in to give him back a plant that wasn’t his.

“She doesn’t fit in our room.”

“And what the fuck do we have to do with it?” Donghyuck was making shooing motions at them, Renjun still frozen. Jaemin was right there, glorious blond hair as if blow dried, holding the door open with just one foot and looking completely unbothered by Donghyuck’s attempts to close it.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Jaemin tutted at Donghyuck, leaning a bit more against the door “This fine lady here is your inheritance. Mark asked me to take care of her during his move out, and just never came to get her back. So, as I’m sure he’d have wanted,” he winked, and even though it wasn’t even directed at himself, Renjun felt his hands start shaking “I’m giving custody back to her rightful guardians.”

“Why’re you talking about this thing as if it’s human? It’s just a plant.”

Jaemin looked scandalized. “Jeno, cover her ears— Miss Evergreen doesn’t deserve to hear that.”

“It has no fucking ears!” Donghyuck gestured wildly “We don’t want he— I mean, we don’t want it!”

“So you agree? You agree that Miss Everdeen is a she?”

“Jaemin _shut_ the _fuck_ up—”

“She’s a red emerald,” the words tumbled out of Renjun’s mouth, and the three people by the door paused. “Miss Evergreen, I mean. So the name you gave her is very fitting.”

The pause stretched for a few seconds too long, and Renjun was about to get fidgety under all that undivided attention. He would’ve probably sacrificed a couple of his classmates without a second thought to have his crush come into his room unprompted like that, just not exactly when he was in his pajamas, hair plastered to his forehead and still sweating buckets from the move and the scorching sunlight coming from not only one, but from _two_ windows, as Donghyuck had noted. So much for the uneventful when the academic year hadn’t even started yet.

But then Jaemin gave the most disarmingly bright smile, and Renjun was a second away from spontaneous combustion.

“See? Injunnie here is going to be the best plant dad there is,” and if the gorgeous grin wasn’t enough, Renjun’s heart was now doing an Olympic floor gymnastics routine after hearing the nickname.

Donghyuck looked back and forth between Renjun and Jaemin. “You can’t possibly be serious. Look at the size of this thing.”

“We really don’t have space for her if we want to get a second desk,” the other guy — Jaemin had called him Jeno — said in an incredibly soft tone, shrugging apologetically. Jaemin pouted, nodding along, and Renjun repressed the urge to say that they could use his and Donghyuck’s room as pure and simple storage space if they so wanted. He ignored Donghyuck’s murderous stare in his peripheral vision.

“D-don’t worry, we have space here,” Donghyuck’s jaw dropped, and Jaemin celebrated, asking Jeno to help him settle the vase down between the two windows. Renjun grimaced and mouthed an apology to Donghyuck as the other two straightened the plant, to which his roommate answered by shaking his head in disbelief.

Jaemin crouched down and clasped his hands together, cooing. “Look how pretty you are here, Miss Evergreen. And don’t you worry, uncle Jaemin and uncle Jeno are gonna visit you whenever we can,” he looked back at Renjun with big, expectant eyes. Renjun fiddled with the hem of his pajama shirt. “Right?”

“Uh. Alright? I guess,” Donghyuck made a silent ‘what the fuck’ motion, and Renjun quickly shushed him. “If you want.”

“Coolio,” he stood up, brushing dust off his knees. “Well, I guess our job here is done? She’s really looking pretty. But we won’t keep you guys any longer,” he put a hand on Renjun’s shoulder for a whole second, and Renjun felt his soul positively leaving his body. “Thanks a lot Injunnie!”

Jeno gave both Donghyuck and Renjun short apologetic nods, and scurried to follow Jaemin.

They stood in silence for a moment, staring at the plant.

“I’m not taking care of that,” Donghyuck started climbing back up to his bed.

“Her,” Renjun muttered, caressing one of the leaves, still feeling the ghost of Jaemin’s hand on his shoulder. He’d called him ‘Injunnie’.

“God, do all crushes turn people this stupid?” Donghyuck complained, shuffling through his song library. “You’re probably thinking about how now you’re two dads sharing custody of the same plant baby,” and, no, that wasn’t what Renjun had been thinking about, but Donghyuck’s remark was enough to make the tip of his ears go pink, burying his face in his hands. “Man, you’re corny as shit.”

Renjun chucked a second notebook at Donghyuck.

“The hell’s wrong with him?” not even the sound of Donghyuck’s lunch tray dropping on the table made Renjun flinch. Chenle barely looked up, but nodded sympathetically.

“First day of classes blues, probably.”

“That’s a thing?”

Yangyang shrugged. “How would I know? He’s been like that since like, first period,” he inched his index finger as if to poke Renjun’s cheek, but Renjun didn’t react. Waved a hand up and down in front of Renjun’s face, and no response. Yangyang shared a look with Donghyuck and shrugged again. “If you’re his roommate and you’ve got no clue what this is about, then you really can’t expect us to.”

“I had to go get him lunch ‘cause dude was just sitting on the table staring at nothing,” Chenle tapped on Renjun’s tray with a fork “But I don’t think he really ate anything yet. It’s kinda creepy.”

Donghyuck hummed, mouth full. “Huh, that’s weird,” a couple of snaps in front of Renjun’s face, still no response. “He was okay this morning? I think?”

“He’s been living with you for a week, maybe the toll’s finally catching up on him,” Yangyang ducked before Donghyuck’s hands could reach his collar.

“Shut the fuck up, I’ll have you know I’m an absolute delight to share a room with,” Chenle snorted, and Donghyuck closed his eyes for a second. “No, I’m serious. One completely forgettable week? Trust me, if I had done something bad, I’d have remembered his reaction.” Chenle had his left eyebrow raised, and Yangyang had his right eyebrow raised, and Donghyuck was sure Renjun would’ve found it absolutely hilarious if his roommate wasn’t halfway catatonic.

“Nothing happened? You’ve done _nothing_?” and no matter how much Donghyuck scourged his brain for something, anything mildly outrageous that would warrant Renjun limply piling the purée in his tray instead of actively trying to choke Donghyuck, there was nothing.

“I _swear_. It’s been so monotonous that the most interesting thing happened during our move in.”

“Why’s that?”

Donghyuck shook his head. “Mark man, leaving his stuff around like horcruxes or something,” Chenle nodded, knowing the burden of keeping Mark’s smaller suitcase until he left for college. “Left this huge plant in the old dorm that we’re now taking care of because Jaemin’s not dealing with—”

Renjun’s cough startled them enough for Chenle’s cutlery to drop to the floor and for Yangyang to choke on his water. The suddenness of Renjun’s coughing fit made Donghyuck freeze as well, until he noticed how red Renjun’s ears were. Twisting his nose in disgust, Donghyuck clapped Renjun on the back until his roommate stopped coughing.

“Holy shit he’s alive,” Yangyang leaned forward, examining Renjun’s face until Renjun flattened a hand on his nose, pushing the face away.

“Quit talking nonsense,” his voice was strong, but the faint blush was still visible down Renjun’s neck from Donghyuck’s seat.

“Yeah, he’s just super excited about our new plant, can’t help thinking about it,” Donghyuck teased and Renjun looked up, a gazillion different warnings in his eyes.

“Can’t believe Jaemin made you guys keep a plant though,” Yangyang slid his unused spoon to Chenle “Thought you didn’t even know each other.”

“We don’t,” came Renjun’s quick answer.

“Oh no, no, we know him,” and the foot that mercilessly kicked Donghyuck in the shin was most definitely Renjun’s. A hiss. “ _Injunnie_ specially knows him _very_ well.”

“What’s that? Did Renjun fight with him? I didn’t even see them talking the whole morning,” Yangyang looked genuinely confused, and Renjun’s new blush, out of embarrassment this time, was enough fuel to Donghyuck.

“Oh,” he turned slowly towards Renjun, who was now burying his face in his hands “I had no idea Jaemin was in class 2 with you guys.”

As Chenle perked up, talking about how his roommate Jisung was also in class 2, and how the class cut must have been either on the letter H or J this year, Renjun tiredly rubbed his face, dreading to meet Donghyuck’s eyes.

“Are you sitting close to him?” Donghyuck whispered, pretending to be busy with his food.

“Please, please just shut up,” all of Renjun’s energy had been used on trying to focus in class for the first half of the day, and he had none to spare on Donghyuck.

“What do you mean?” he feigned shock and Renjun kicked his shin again. “Fuck, man, this hurts.”

“Serves you well. Stop talking about it.”

Yangyang narrowed his eyes. “Talking about what?”

Donghyuck and Renjun held eye contact for long enough to make the table fall into an uncomfortable silence. Renjun cleared his throat. “About how the, uh, new class division is just as weird as the new dorms”

Donghyuck rolled his eyes. “God, they really do become stupid,” and quickly moved his feet out of the way before Renjun could kick him again.

“So what happens when you get held back as a senior?” Renjun pressed the space key a bit too hard. He chewed his bottom lip, closing his eyes for a second, and wondering what would come out of it if he bit the bait Donghyuck was throwing. His roommate made a questioning, annoying sound, and Renjun considered finishing his digital planner in the common room. “I wonder if that’s how it happens,” Donghyuck singsonged, and Renjun decided that biting the bait earlier meant that Donghyuck would leave him alone earlier as well.

“Who’s getting held back now?”

Donghyuck hummed. “Yang said you haven’t even opened your notebook in class yet. It’s been three days,” he sighed dramatically “He’s wondering if you’re planning on transferring, because you’re just gonna get held back like this.”

“I don’t—” but Renjun cut himself short, because, well, he really hadn’t done much in class yet. Actually, if he was honest with himself, Renjun would admit he’d done nothing at _all_. “I’m adjusting, alright? Tell Yangyang to focus on his own studies.”

“Is ‘adjusting’ a code for staring at Jaemin’s face or—” Renjun swiveled around in his chair and Donghyuck quickly raised both hands in defeat. “I’m joking, I’m kidding, alright? Unless that’s like, what you’re actually doing,” and Renjun could see from his roommate’s smug smile more than from the heat of his own skin that he was blushing. He clicked his tongue and turned back to his laptop.

“I don’t look at him. Like, at all,” a sigh “So that’s not the problem.”

Donghyuck was quiet for a long moment, and Renjun could almost feel his shoulders relaxing enough for him to go back to typing before his roommate spoke up again. “No, I kinda think that that’s the problem.”

Silence.

Renjun clenched his fists over the keyboard. He was terribly tempted to snap back and say something about how Donghyuck was a few years too young and a few degrees too short from being anyone’s therapist, but. Even if Mark wasn’t too busy with his new college freshman life to talk about romantic woes, Renjun had never actually gotten a solid second opinion on his whole crush thing. It was hard, figuring out who in an all-boys boarding high school would be cool enough with discussing Renjun’s sexuality with zero conscious or unconscious prejudice, and who truly wouldn’t mind hearing about his silly crush to give him advice.

And though rooming with Donghyuck wasn’t the best thing that had ever happened to him for a wide array of reasons, maybe Donghyuck’s willingness to listen and talk about it made his less than stellar qualities as a roommate almost redeemable. So, as much as it pained him, Renjun was not about to pass on the opportunity to get some free, even if questionable, counseling.

“What do you mean by that?” and Renjun decided to pointedly ignore how both of Donghyuck’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline just because his tone had been reasonably calm. It kind of made him want to leave for the common room again.

But then Donghyuck properly sat up on the top bunk, locked his phone as if fully preparing to immerse himself in that conversation, and Renjun thought that maybe he wasn’t that bad, after all.

“I, uh, how do I say this,” Donghyuck scratched the back of his hand, looking up to the ceiling like he was actually remembering a whole monologue instead of coming up with one on the spot. “I think you can’t focus in class because you trying to not focus on him demands way too much of your attention.”

Huh.

“No, yeah, that makes sense. But,” Renjun raised a finger before his roommate started talking again “Things would be so much worse if, like, he caught me staring. Like. In the middle of class, or something. I think I’d stop going, and I’m not even joking.”

Donghyuck stared at him for a long moment. “I think you should confess.”

Renjun snorted. “Yeah, I too think I should just yeet myself out of the window,” he rolled his eyes, turning back to the laptop. Yeah, maybe it had been stupid to think Donghyuck could help him with what probably was the current biggest problem of his life, but a guy could dream.

“No, no,” Donghyuck jumped down from the top bunk, turning Renjun’s chair around and sitting on their bean bag, elbows propped on his knees. “Hear me out for a second, okay? What if,” a dramatic pause, and Renjun resisted the urge to turn away again. “What if, you’re feeling this way because you’re pent up?”

Renjun blushed furiously. “I really think you should just shut up,” but Donghyuck waved his hands frantically.

“No, not like that, just hear me out alright, like,” Donghyuck made wide, random nonsensical gestures between his chest and his head. “You know?”

“No.”

Donghyuck threw his head back, groaning. “Okay, let’s start over. I think you should confess. I think that since you’ve liked him for what, a year now?” Donghyuck stopped and Renjun meekly nodded “Cool, a year now. And correct me if I’m wrong, which I don’t think I am, but I think your longest interaction was like, the she-plant fiasco.”

“Miss Evergreen,” Renjun muttered.

“Whatever. What I’m trying to say is, you’ve had all these complicated emotions for all this time and you only got to act on it for the like, thirteen seconds of the five times you interacted with him, or something. So deep down you’re probably worried that by being so close to him, the whole metaphorical emotional dam is gonna burst, and keeping everything under control is so hard for you, that you stop focusing on everything else. So, I think you should just— tell him? Somehow get it out? To, I don’t know, give yourself some room to breathe.”

They were silent for a long moment, and Renjun felt like the human embodiment of TV static.

“I, wow,” which, really, wasn’t what he intended to say, but his brain was either processing things so fast that he couldn’t catch one specific thought, or his head was just fully empty. But Donghyuck was looking at him expectantly, as if hoping to hear some sort of conclusion, and that really was the most solid piece of advice he’d ever gotten, even after talking about it with Mark for so long. So. “And... just, how do I even do something like that?”

Donghyuck put a hand on Renjun’s shoulder, a sympathetic smile. “Not to throw everything I just said straight in the trash but, before you can blurt out your undying love for him, you kinda have to learn how to talk to the guy first, right?”

Renjun swatted Donghyuck’s hand away, and turned back to the desk, ears red. His roommate chuckled and climbed back up to his bed, humming something that sounded suspiciously like ‘I Will Always Love You’, and that was just about where their short truce ended.

“Cut it out,” Renjun hissed, and Donghyuck chuckled again.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Donghyuck singsonged, and Renjun would have retorted, if he wasn’t so busy opening Amazon and ordering a copy of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’

“So,” Yangyang jumped, exhaling a soft ‘oh my God’ as Donghyuck slapped a hand on his desk. “Who’s borrowing me their Bio textbook?”

Yangyang sighed, leaning back on the chair. “Tough luck.”

“No, I’m serious. I’ve got Bio next and I’m failing.”

“It’s the second week of classes?” Donghyuck shrugged, and Yangyang sighed again. “No, I’m serious too. We don’t have Bio today.”

Donghyuck paused for a moment, crossing his arms. “Fine. Give me another textbook with a green cover then.”

“Why don’t you go bother your roommate like— Hey Renjun get a hold of—” but Yangyang fell silent, frowning. “It’s this again, he’s doing it again, should I actually be worried?”

Donghyuck clicked his tongue, studying his roommate’s blank expression and empty gaze. He turned back and forth once, twice, a finger raised as if following Renjun’s probable line of sight. “Where does Jaemin sit?”

Yangyang’s frown only deepened. “The third row? Like— over there. What does this have to do with anything?”

Bingo.

Donghyuck smiled slowly, gears turning in his head at fully speed. He nodded to himself. “Ah, it’s fine. I can just go see if he has the book on him.”

“Who, Jaemin? Do you really think he—”

“I’ll borrow you mine,” Renjun stood up abruptly, yanking the back of Donghyuck’s uniform shirt. “I’ll, I have the textbook. You don’t need to bother Jaemin.”

Silence.

“You’re actually insane, you realize that, right?” Donghyuck asked over Yangyang’s low whistle.

“Shut up,” Renjun muttered, clumsily pushing the chair away so he could search for the textbook in his bag. He pushed the hardback against Donghyuck’s chest, lightly steering him towards the classroom door. “Please leave, now.”

Donghyuck hummed. “This is actually painful to watch, bro.”

“I don’t care.” Renjun hissed.

“No, no, you do— stop for a sec, listen,” Donghyuck spun a few times, evading Renjun’s arms pushing him out of Class 2. “It’s getting seriously concerning. Did you... did you think about it?”

Renjun narrowed his eyes. “About what?”

“You know. The thing.”

It took Renjun five whole seconds and Seungmin not so discreetly turning around to enter the classroom from the front door instead for him to uncross his arms and sigh, giving in.

“People are gonna think we’re fighting.”

Donghyuck snorted. “Well yeah, with how defensive you get when the topic is,” Renjun narrowed his eyes again “Sheesh, sheesh, yeah, alright, you get what I mean. What I’m saying is,” and Renjun was actually ready to listen to his roommate for an entire uninterrupted minute, had his Jaemin wired brain not caught the bane of his existence approaching the classroom in his peripheral vision. Renjun swallowed. He honestly hoped that the chain of _please go through the front door, please go through the front door, please go through the front door_ was only in his head, and that Donghyuck’s confused expression had nothing to do with it having been said out loud.

But as most of Renjun’s prayers as of late, this one was also ignored.

Instead, Jaemin pushed his complaining roommate through the door, Renjun flattening against the threshold, and threw a brilliant smile back.

“Don’t keep our Injunnie out here for too long Hyuck,” a wink “Class’ starting.”

Still frozen against the threshold, Renjun mentally counted up to five, and raised a finger in warning before his roommate could resume speaking.

“No, shut up,” he pushed Donghyuck’s shoulders to turn him towards Class 1 “I don’t wanna hear it. Take my book and go.”

Pushing back against Rejun’s hands, Donghyuck turned his head, hissing. “Alright, this is it, if you don’t grow some balls and do something about this already, I’ll do it for you,” twisting himself away, Donghyuck hurried down the corridor as the bell rang. Renjun stood by the door, all blood leaving his face.

“You wouldn’t!” and the only answer was the thumbs up Donghyuck threw before getting inside Class 1. And, quite unfortunately, Renjun also believed his roommate would.

One nervous glance back towards his desk, and his eyes couldn’t help but make a detour to a seat in the third row, the back of a blond head, the sliver of a wide smile. It wasn’t like he also didn’t think his entire situation was ridiculous, but there weren’t many things Renjun had done in the past year to change it at all. If before he had been fighting against himself, he was now fighting against time — Donghyuck’s time — and that could mean anything, from the next hour, to after graduation, and the thought didn’t sit right in Renjun’s stomach.

He just needed a sign. That was what he’d honestly been waiting all that while — any sort of opening that would help him not hate himself regardless of the result. And he needed one fast, before Donghyuck could—

Jaemin met his eyes.

A confused head tilt, a short nod before finishing turning towards his desk neighbor. Renjun was aware of his habit of staring and was also careful to not let Jaemin know he’d been staring at him and was so stressed thinking about things other than not staring and also kinda wanted to die.

He tapped Yangyang on the shoulder before standing up quickly. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Renjun was in a mood. His friends debated whether it was an improvement from the first week of classes, or if it was a further descent into something with no return, and surprisingly, the results were fifty-fifty. Not that the unnecessarily long words and the Model UN discussion format could legitimize the topic when it was done over hash brown crumbs and spilled chocolate milk on their breakfast table.

Side A pointed out that he was responding to external stimuli like a person again — after a three minute digression, because Chenle was shocked that Donghyuck could use the words ‘external stimuli’ correctly in a sentence — while Side B was worried Renjun’s current face would unknowingly start a fight with someone.

“I swear I’m not making it up,” Yangyang leaned forward “I heard Sunwoo telling Youngjae that our dear friend here was sizing him up.”

“Now that’s bullshit, I only asked him if he’d delivered the forms to the teacher’s office because I hadn’t submitted mine yet,” Renjun huffed, stabbing the straw in the juice box.

“Alright but did you also have to, like, angrily stare at him for five minutes, make him go up to you and ask what the hell your problem was, and basically throw your form on his face? That’s asking for a fight.”

Three pairs of eyes turned to Renjun, and he slurped on the box for a moment.

“I guess I could’ve been a bit more polite.”

“Yeah, I’d definitely fight you if it were me,” Chenle whistled when Renjun kicked him in the shins. With that, there was no consensus on whether angry Renjun was better than catatonic Renjun before the bell rang for the first period.

Still, Renjun was in a mood.

And his day did not give a single damn about it.

Holding the back of Yangyang’s shirt collar, he leaned forward. “You know what to do, right?”

“I, uh,” Yangyang loosened his tie a bit, and Renjun reveled over that fact that his friend was actually sweating trying to find an excuse. If he was going to leave Renjun on his own like that, he should at least be a bit uncomfortable about it. “Last year Sanha and I decided to partner up again if we were in the same class for senior year, it wasn’t—”

“Traitor,” Renjun released Yangyang’s collar as he scrambled to come up with more excuses.

“What the— You weren’t even in my class last year! I bet if Donghyuck was here you’d partner up with him and leave me alone too and—”

Renjun chuckled. “Relax, man. I’m just joking,” and if Yangyang noticed the sudden high pitch in Renjun’s voice and the obvious lie, he didn’t comment on it.

Truth was, most of his closer acquaintances were not in Class 2 this year, so Renjun didn’t stick to Yangyang just to be annoying. And while it would be much better to have one of his closest friends as his lab partner, maybe he really should start branching out a bit more if only for the last year of high school.

Maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part, maybe he just wanted to partner up with someone outside his friend group just so if Sunwoo ever told anyone that Renjun was aggressive as hell, he could have extra back up. Maybe he was a Scorpio Mars and hoped that Yangyang would feel replaced by his new lab partner.

Mr. Kim knocked twice on the board, and the room fell silent again. “Those who still don’t have a partner, please raise your hand,” and with a final burning look towards Yangyang, Renjun slowly raised his. “Then, I’ll assign numbers one and two to you guys. Ones have to pair up with the twos that are sitting the closest to you, okay? Okay. Starting from here, you, one, two, one, two, one, two—”

Maybe what Renjun really needed was to cleanse his mind and soul of all these vengeful thoughts, as it suddenly felt like karma was doing its very best to get back at him, because the moment Mr. Kim pointed the attendance book in his direction and assigned him the last number two, it was like Renjun’s mind had become the sound effect of a record scratch and then gone silent.

“The lab partner sheet is still going around, so make sure to finish signing it and have the representative deliver to me before the end of the next period. That’s it for today boys, remember that next class we’re still meeting here before heading to the lab!” but Renjun could not for the life of him join the apathetic chorus of ‘Thank You Mr. Kim’ as the bell rang. No, he had more pressing issues than Yangyang turning back to try apologizing a second time, and than the four minutes he had to thread the chaotic hallway and get the history textbook from his locker.

Because from two seats down and in the next row over, Jaemin was making his way towards Renjun’s desk.

“So you’re a two, right?”

Renjun stared for a moment at the lab partner sheet Jaemin had placed on his desk. “I, yeah?”

“Cool, then I think I’m the one closest to you,” record scratch one more time. Renjun refrained from physically shaking the thought away and have Jaemin think he was more of a weirdo than he probably already did. Instead, he looked up with a sheepish smile, and hoped the tremble in his hands wasn’t noticeable as he wrote his name next to Jaemin’s. “That’s funny, I thought you were gonna pair with Yangyang.”

He wasn’t sure whether he was hallucinating, but the way Jaemin rested both hands at the side of his desk, the way Jaemin spoke with a hint of tease in his voice, it was almost like Renjun imagined Jaemin would act if he really was the closest one to him. With a confidence not at all like that was their probable fifth in person interaction, or something. But then again, maybe sharing the custody of a plant did bring people together.

“Why aren’t you partnering with your roommate too?” Renjun had almost forgotten that the traitor sitting in front of him was actual friends with the love of his life. Almost.

Jaemin shrugged. “Jeno’s got a fever today, so he stayed at the dorms. I don’t think he minds partnering with someone else too.”

“Oh,” Renjun felt himself blush when Jaemin turned his attention back at him, and scrambled for something, anything to say. “Is it okay, though? L-like, it’s totally fine if you write his name down instead.”

To watch Jaemin smile was a wonderful thing, no matter why or how. He’d waxed poetry about it once, when Jungwoo, a friend from Mark’s hometown visited for a weekend and smuggled some beers in. Renjun’s slightly tipsy brain had gone on a tirade about at least 28 different types of Jaemin-smiles, and what each of them meant, and right now he was sure this was a number 8. A slow one, almost calculating, that didn’t quite reach Jaemin’s eyes because he was so so much attention to the thing he was smiling at. Which, in that case, was Renjun. His ears were probably burning red.

“Oh no, it’s all good. We don’t work well on assignments together anyway,” Jaemin tapped twice with his pen over the sheet, and tilted his head to read the names. “So if you signed your name already, I’m gonna give this to the others,” he nodded to himself before Renjun could answer, taking the piece of paper away with a wink. “Thanks, Injunnie.”


	2. Chapter 2

“So, what?” Donghyuck asked around a mouthful of chips. “Did you faint? Did you vomit after talking to him again?”

Renjun wrinkled his nose, fixing his roommate with a glare. “Won’t you get indigestion eating while lying down like this?”

“Stop deflecting,” he huffed, but sat up straight on the top bunk.

“I never vomited after talking to him, are you insane?”

“Yang said you got sick that day I got your bio textbook, and like, it was coincidentally after Jaemin called you ‘Injunnie’ by the door, so.”

There were times Renjun really wished his roommate was simply dumb. Maybe just a bit socially unaware. That would probably lessen his urge to land a punch on his face by 40%. Possibly.

“I _didn’t_ vomit. I just needed some fresh air,” Donghyuck hummed in fake agreement, balling the chips bag and aiming to the trash can. “And I need that book back.”

The bag fell next to Ms. Evergreen. “I wonder how you’re gonna pass lab when he calls you Injunnie every time you guys need to cross check the answers and you end up feeling sick.”

“Stop deflecting,” Renjun hissed, and Donghyuck rolled his eyes, climbing down to properly throw the chips bag in the trash.

“Yeah, yeah, my bad, I forgot it in the lockers. You’re gonna get it tomorrow,” Donghyuck leaned on the side of the bunk and dramatically crossed his heart when Renjun narrowed his eyes. “I swear. And you better think about how to get over this crush of yours before you fail lab.”

He couldn’t climb up fast enough to avoid being hit by both Renjun’s pillows.

Donghyuck didn’t return the book the next day. He was also purposefully asleep when Renjun came back to the room, and somehow managed to leave for breakfast before Renjun even woke up.

He wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or to rekindle his anger. Impressed because his roommate had already figured that even though explosive at first, Renjun’s anger couldn’t be sustained for longer than 24 hours, and rekindle because the day before had been his first lab session, and he already had to borrow his lab partner’s textbook.

Jaemin’s textbook, that was. His lab partner. Jaemin. In bio. Who had his textbook ready, all prim and proper. For their bio lab. Where they were partners. Jaemin, he means. Together.

It was also what he’d told Mark over the phone, verbatim, to which his ex-roommate laughed so hard he momentarily hung up the call. But in the morning, Renjun’s past embarrassment and anger seemed extremely out of place to him, even if every time he caught sight of Ms. Evergreen while putting his uniform on, he saw flashes of Jaemin’s bright smile and his skin got goosebumps at the memory of how close they were seated to read from the same pages.

Shaking his head, Renjun cleared his throat and hummed a song as he adjusted his tie on the mirror, briefly remembering how, at one point, Jaemin rested an arm on the back of Renjun’s chair, eyebrows handsomely knitted as he read over the instructions. Renjun was going to skin Donghyuck alive.

“You’re dressed all funny,” Chenle said over the bread in his mouth.

Renjun wrinkled his nose. “Don’t talk with your mouth open,” and purposefully put his breakfast tray down diagonally from him. Chenle only swallowed and scooted over, unfazed.

“You look like you got dressed in the dark,” he pointed with his chin to Renjun’s mismatched buttons and crooked tie. “You might get a write up for that if they catch you in the hallways,” Renjun huffed a shut up while fixing his clothes, uncomfortable with the way Chenle continued to stare at him while eating his pretzel.

“What?”

“Wondering if I should ask, or if you’re gonna tell me why Hyuck almost busted his knees getting out of the table when he saw you walk in,” Renjun immediately stopped redoing his buttons, stretching his neck to look around the cafeteria.

“Is that _thing_ still here?”

Chenle snorted. “Oh no, he bolted before you even started serving your tray.”

Was what Donghyuck did over breakfast, and then over lunch, as well as every time Renjun tried to sneak into Class 1 between periods. When the final bell rang and Renjun didn’t even catch sight of his roommate in the packed corridors, his anger started boiling again. He’d have bio lab right before lunch the next morning, and if Donghyuck didn’t show up with his textbook in the dorm again that night then Renjun would—

A neon purple piece of paper fluttered down to Renjun’s feet. He looked around to the boys going up and down the hallway, but there was no one by the lockers close to him. That paper had definitely fallen from inside his own.

Picking it up and turning it over, there was nothing written. Renjun put his books over his locker and unfolded the purple paper, once, twice. An _I’m so sorry!!!!!!!_ was written with a bold marker inside, followed by a grossly inaccurate diagram of cell organelles. Puzzled by the note — and the choice of paper, _and_ the illustration — Renjun turned the paper once again. In small letters under one of the folds, _hope you’re not too angry. i put your bio book right behind the grey spiral notebook :D_. He sighed, rearranging his books and closing his locker, purple note still on hand.

How easy must it be to hide from confrontation like this. Renjun could only imagine how peaceful his roommate’s mind must feel after dumping his responsibilities in a silly note that Renjun could’ve ended up not even reading. It wasn’t even that serious, but it still got him disproportionately heated up. What was the point of avoiding Renjun like the plague, and instead having to come up with some absurd elaborate plan for something that would’ve been sorted in three seconds if said in person?

He balled the offending neon paper, looking for the closest trash can. What if he’d thrown it away before even reading? If Renjun had thought it wasn’t his and left it on the floor, would he still be unreasonably upset at Donghyuck thinking he didn’t apologize? That was a stupid thing to do. For a second he didn’t even know what he was reading, it wasn’t like he knew Donghyuck’s handwriting, and just why write someone a fucking note when smartphones and messaging apps were widely available and _in person conversations_ and if Renjun could just put away his silly little problems in a silly little note and call it a day he would and—

Renjun came to a halt in front of the trash can. He raised the neon purple paper for a moment, brow furrowed.

He would.

Renjun was half aware of how he must’ve looked like to the thin stream of boys still walking down the corridor, looking at a colorful, crumpled piece of rubbish as if it held all the answers of the universe, hogging the only trash can nearby. But the gears in his head were turning so fast he wondered if aside from all of that, if anyone could see the smoke coming out of his ears too, because, he _would_. Put his silly little problems, in a silly little note.

When he slammed the dorm room open, scaring Donghyuck nearly out of his mind, he took two minutes to firstly dissuade his roommate from calling an ambulance or their dorm parent as he caught his breath from running all the way there. Putting both of his hands on the shoulders of a still bewildered Donghyuck, Renjun swallowed four times to find his voice, sweat dripping down his temple.

“I’m not gonna fail lab.”

Subjectively, that was the smartest thing Renjun had ever done in his life. Objectively, it was probably the fact that his team reached the semi finals of the National Physics Olympiad the year before, but the Coriolis acceleration was nothing when he had to deal with how his mind spun around Jaemin.

Donghyuck thought it was silly. But Donghyuck only said it was silly after Mark had gone quiet on speaker for a few moments, breathing a _yo, that’s kind of genius bro_ , so it didn’t really count. Besides, Renjun didn’t need any more validation when his mind thought obsessively about the plan for the following twenty hours, even in his dreams. He was going to go through with it, and maybe then he’d go back to being a functioning student and well adjusted member of society afterwards.

And the plan went something kind of like this: he’d tell Jaemin how he felt about him. Plain and simple. But not in person, no — Renjun had thought long and hard about it, and he was sure he couldn’t live that down. So, he’d write it down. In a plainer and simpler inked piece of paper, that he’d plainly and simply put inside Jaemin’s locker, and godspeed to him.

Because really, Renjun had nothing to lose by putting a love letter in his crush’s locker. He’d get to anonymously confess his feelings, taking all and every weight off of his shoulders, and Jaemin would get a nice ego boost, with no pressure to respond. A win-win situation.

And that was what he kept repeating to himself every few minutes throughout the whole morning, clenching the folded paper a little tighter in his hands every period break, when he surveyed the lockers outside of the classroom for an optimal delivery time. Heart hammering in his chest when he caught sight of someone who could accidentally see him opening Jaemin’s locker, making one, and two, and seven U-turns from and back to the classroom without ever going through with the plan.

The bell rang again, and Renjun was slowly letting doubt creep into his mind, when Yangyang exclaimed something about hating doing track in this weather, and Renjun’s heartbeat picked up again.

“We have P.E. now?”

Yangyang looked at him with a head tilt, but decided to not comment on it. “What are we wearing P.E. uniforms for, then?” Renjun nodded, slowly, grateful that soon enough his friends would no longer assume that weird was his new normal.

Because P.E. was the optimal time.

Stumbling over excuses of why he wouldn’t walk with Yangyang to the field and had to stay behind for a few minutes, Renjun felt sweat in his hands as he picked the folded paper from his backpack again. Two minutes in the bathroom was enough for the hallways to have cleared off, everyone in their respective classrooms as the new period started. Renjun took a calming breath, and then two, as he stopped in front of Jaemin’s locker. A bold J was scratched on the corner of the door, random doodles sprouting from it. He took a second to trace the doodles with his fingers, and stepped away as if electrocuted, reminding himself to just put the goddamn letter inside before someone caught him being acting like a creep in front of someone else’s locker.

The inside was neatly organized, with more random doodles adorning the space around the metal handle. Renjun carefully placed the piece of paper with shaky hands in front of the textbooks, and closed the door, running down the hallway as soon as he heard the click, before he could change his mind.

It wasn’t that odd for Renjun to skip breakfast. Donghyuck liked to ‘secretly’ play games well into the night sometimes, and even with headphones, the sound of his roommate smashing the keyboard usually kept Renjun awake too. He had technically missed more days of breakfast for waking up late than not since the first day of classes, so it really wasn’t that weird for him to head straight to class.

What was strange was that the cafeteria would only open for breakfast in about seven minutes, and Renjun was already posted in front of his classroom.

Not in front of his classroom, no — in front of Jaemin’s locker, to be specific. He’d never be up and out of the dorms before six in the morning out of sheer free will. Renjun hadn’t even slept.

He tried, he really did. It was just that every time he closed his eyes, he’d be transported to the end of last period from the day before, and whine until Donghyuck sleepily huffed at him to shut up from the top bunk. But Donghyuck wouldn’t understand what it was like for Renjun to watch Jaemin have his handsomely sculpted face progressively contort in either anger or disgust — Renjun _hated_ either alternative — as he read the letter.

He shouldn’t have stayed back. He should have left the thing inside the locker and be done with it. Wasn’t that the whole purpose, from the very beginning? To confess his feelings in order to get over them? So now Renjun not only was very much _not_ over his feelings for Jaemin, but also had found a gazillion other things to worry about on top of it.

Was Jaemin angry that someone opened his locker to put the letter inside? But Renjun didn’t touch anything inside, really. Not a single thing had been moved. Did he find the letter creepy? No, only four awkward sentences where Renjun even made sure to say he wasn’t looking for some sort of answer, he just wanted to let Jaemin know he made his days better. Wasn’t that considered sweet?

With one hand on top of the locker’s handle, Renjun swallowed. There were other options to consider, too, ones that he liked much less. From the day he realized he liked Jaemin, he also realized he never expected for the feeling to be reciprocated at all. Renjun had thought himself straight up until that point anyway, so it wouldn’t be that heartbreaking if Jaemin was too. It was just that his heart beat a bit uncomfortably when he thought that Jaemin might have disliked the love letter because it came from a guy.

Still, Renjun was nothing if not a fool in love, and the thought of his crush feeling any sort of discomfort, specially because of him, was unacceptable. And when he wondered whether receiving a confession like that would negatively affect the remainder of Jaemin’s experience in an all-boys school, Renjun felt incredibly sad.

So, against all warnings from Donghyuck, Mark, and Mark’s college roommate Lucas — who was somehow aware of all Renjun’s romantic woes — he decided to leave a second letter. Not to push his feelings, no, it would be an apology of sorts. Even if Mark had said Renjun shouldn’t apologize for something like that, he wanted Jaemin to know it was never his intention to make him uncomfortable in any way.

But once again, he was frozen. Even at six in the morning, even if there was not a soul in those corridors apart from Renjun — his heart raced more than when placing the first letter.

 _This is the last time, this is the last time, this is the last time_ , he chanted as he slowly opened the locker’s door, metal springs too loud in the empty hallway. It was just as neatly organized as the day before, almost as if his letter had never been there at all. _Of course it wasn’t there anymore_ , Renjun thought, a lump in his throat, _Jaemin had probably thrown it away._ With a deep breath, Renjun placed the last letter he told himself he’d ever write to Jaemin right in front of the textbooks, and closed the locker’s door carefully.

As it would turn out, it wasn’t the last letter.

“You might as well write him a fucking book, huh?”

“I just, it’s not like we’re texting, you know?” Renjun frowned, handing Donghyuck more flyers of the Concert Choir auditions. “When I realize I need to add more stuff to what I’m saying, it’s not like I can delete it all and retype it again.”

“You could, actually. Pin,” Donghyuck extended his hand, and Renjun handed him two tacks to place the flyer on the cork board. “If, you know, you asked for his number like an actual human being, and, oh, maybe talked about it like regular people do too?”

Renjun grumbled. “I have his number. We have a GroupMe for the whole class,” Donghyuck stopped, hands midair, and turned to look towards Renjun with a blank face. Renjun sighed, “Yeah, yeah, but you do get my point too,” he pointedly ignored Donghyuck’s _not really, no,_ and headed to the stairs.

It was just — hard, specially when it dawned on Renjun just how comfortable anonymity truly was. He had confessed his love and apologized if the confession sounded creepy without ever having to face Jaemin for it. No, he had actually faced faced Jaemin’s side profile from the comfort of about four feet away, as Renjun pretended to organize his own locker while gauging for Jaemin’s reactions. And though a comfortable distance to observe, there wasn’t much Renjun could do about eavesdropping, and he wasn’t good at lip reading either.

“What was it that Lucas said again? Something about how that’s way creepier than if you wrote indecent things in the first letter,” Donghyuck caught up with him on the stairs, and Renjun picked up his pace.

“It’s not,” Renjun started, out of breath “it’s not like that. I don’t go around following his every move like a stalker. I just want to see his reaction when he’s reading what I wrote, you know?”

“Do you know _how_ you’d be able to properly see _and_ hear his reaction?” Renjun stopped, looking expectantly at Donghyuck. His roommate smirked “If you talked to him face to face.”

Slapping extra flyers on Donghyuck’s chest, Renjun ignored his coughs and resumed walking. “I don’t know why I even try listening to you,” but reaching the end of the hallway, Renjun faltered. Donghyuck was just about done pinning the remaining flyers to the cork board on their floor, and Renjun couldn’t move an inch. Worried that the paper would get stained with sweat while hesitating, he kept changing the hand holding the letter. The third and final one. That _was_ the last time he’d do something like this, otherwise he’d be going completely overboard and risking having Jaemin develop pure and unadulterated hate towards this secret admirer because he just wouldn’t _leave him alone_.

The last time, for real.

Though it should’ve technically gotten easier to do this by now, Renjun just couldn’t bring himself to open Jaemin’s locker and leave the letter inside. Unlike the first two, that were brief, straight to the point, and somehow rather bleak, this last one was different. Filling almost one entire page, Renjun came to the conclusion that the saying go big or go home was created because some higher being wanted him to pour his heart out over ink and paper, not worried if some paragraphs were the most cringeworthy things he’d ever written, or if some were just not readable at all, from how fast his hands moved to catch up with the words in his brain. This time it was different.

It had mostly to do with how Jaemin had reacted to his apology letter, too. Renjun had seen clear surprise on his face when finding the folded paper, and something about how Jaemin discreetly hid the letter in his uniform when his roommate Jeno approached the locker, made Renjun’s heart soar. If he had been truly disgusted by the whole secret admirer thing, he surely would laugh at the contents of the letter with his friends, wouldn’t he? Act dismissively, mocking the whole ordeal. But he didn’t.

“So are you doing this or not?” Donghyuck called from the middle of the hallway, and Renjun flinched. “We still gotta stop by the dorms before dinner!”

He took a deep breath, and the closing click of the locker felt final.

After being late for dinner on Friday, and an impromptu trip upstate to visit Mark in college over the weekend, by Monday Renjun had almost forgotten everything about the love letter fiasco.

Almost.

So he told himself that it was completely normal to get to his locker some twenty minutes before class, and that staying frozen by its open metal door until then was nothing out of the ordinary either.

But that had been the third and last letter, and Renjun wouldn’t be able to completely let go if he didn’t see the plan until the very end.

So when Jaemin arrived fifteen minutes later and headed straight to class, Renjun had to physically restrain himself from pouting, closing his locker door with a bit more force than strictly necessary. As he turned the metal handle, though, he froze once again.

It wasn’t like Renjun didn’t allow anybody else to touch his locker. Hell, Yangyang would borrow his notes all the time, and Donghyuck now had half custody of his Bio textbook. He just didn’t know who would feel overtly comfortable with someone rummaging through his things, calmly flipping through his notebooks, and writing on the magnet calendar inside. Which, was everything Jaemin’s roommate was currently doing to Jaemin’s locker. Granted, he was close with his roommate too, but he still wouldn’t feel very comfortable if Donghyuck went through his things like that. Weirdly upset in Jaemin’s behalf, Renjun furrowed his brow and headed to class.

And then he remembered what he’d been waiting outside for.

With a loud gasp that drew looks from five students nearby, Renjun turned around to what he felt like the most cinematic moment of his existence so far, because time seemed to slow down as he watched Jeno not only pick up, but also unfold and start reading his love letter. Renjun supposed that if he was in a sitcom, that would be the moment where he would scream a distorted low pitched _NO_ and stumble on his feet in slow motion with a raised hand and after fifteen camera angle changes, tackle Jeno to the ground to retrieve the letter. And quite literally all he could do to not actually follow that kind of script in real like was to fully imagine how deadly it would be to his social life, forcing himself to speed walk the remaining distance to the classroom.

“I think we can finish this in ten minutes tops, and get a head start in the lab so—” Renjun unceremoniously plopped down on the seat next to Jaemin, still breathing hard and clutching his backpack as if it was the last thread of his sanity. “Are you... alright?”

Renjun swallowed. If his mind wasn’t already in overdrive, he was sure he’d feel sick after realizing just how weird he was acting in front of _Jaemin_ , but that was a problem for the many nights he’d spend awake reliving his embarrassment later. At that moment, his brain kept replaying the way Jeno’s eyes disappeared into crescent moons the farther he read the letter, and the soft smile that accompanied it. He raised his head, and Jaemin was still staring at him with a half concerned expression. A shiver ran down his spine.

“I’m,” his throat felt dry again, and he forced himself to unclench finger by finger from his backpack. “I’m, yeah, alright?”

Jaemin slightly narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe it, and Renjun wasn’t really sure who would either. But the bell had just rang, and they would be actually ahead in lab if they managed to start the new assignment in class, so Jaemin warily let it go.

“Okay,” the word was drawled out, as he put the sheet down on the table. “We just need to analyze the chart in the beginning of chapter two to finish,” Renjun nodded along as Jaemin spoke, and Jaemin nodded at the end, before they were locked in an awkward staring competition. Renjun’s heartbeat really was not getting back to normal any time soon.

“What?”

“I forgot my textbook today, was counting on you getting yours?” Jaemin pointed with his chin to Renjun’s still closed backpack, and Renjun could feel color rising to his cheeks. God. Not only his brain half shut down every time he was in Jaemin’s vicinity, but now his crush would also think that he wanted to take advantage of Jaemin as a lab partner and not ever bring in any materials. He scrambled to get the textbook, and hurriedly flipped to the right page, but then. An opportunity, and the words tumbled out of Renjun’s mouth faster than he could process them.

“Ah, if it’s hard to read like this, Mr. Kim would probably let you get yours from the locker still,” a whole, entire desert in Renjun’s mouth when Jaemin laughed lowly, shaking his head as he tilted Renjun’s book.

“Nah, I don’t even have a locker since, hm, mid freshman year?”

A pause.

“You... don’t?”

Most likely misinterpreting Renjun’s comically round-eyed look, Jaemin was quick to raise his hands in defense. “I swear it’s better, actually. Makes me unable to skip homework and all,” and when Renjun, still frozen, only allowed his eyes to follow Jaemin’s movements, his hand gestures got even bigger trying to prove the perks of it. “I _swear_! Like, when I really need one for whatever reason, I just borrow my roommate’s locker. Jeno doesn’t actually mind.”

His hands were damp. “Ah,” he really, really hoped Jaemin didn’t notice how pale his face had become, and how tiny beads of sweat were forming on his temples. He was going to be sick. “I see.”

“IT WASN’T HIS LOCKER,” Renjun’s voice was close to a shrill, and Yangyang almost fell from the bench. Donghyuck only nodded distractedly.

“What the _fuck_ are you going on about now?”

“Mhm, of course it—” Donghyuck’s hands stopped clicking, and there was a shock of red screen on the phone as he lost the game. Sitting up too quickly just as Yangyang got himself comfortable again almost made their friend fall a second time. “What?!”

“It’s,” a hiccup “That locker wasn’t his.”

At first there was a long pause, and then Donghyuck threw himself from the bench in a fit of laughter, face and neck red as he fanned himself. Renjun wasn’t above strangling him.

“No seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the two of you,” Yangyang whispered, horrified as Donghyuck rolled on the grass and Renjun looked close to tears.

“Whose was it then,” Donghyuck heaved, wiping his eyes.

Renjun took a deep breath, and actually hid his face in his hands before muttering, “His roommate’s.”

“Why are they crying,” Chenle nudged Yangyang as soon as he dropped his backpack on the ground, frowning.

“Hold up, you don’t know either?” Yangyang asked over Donghyuck’s chants of _his roommate, his roommate_ , rolling on the ground away from Renjun’s attempted kicks.

“About Renjun? Never have a clue.”

“God, I’m still reeling,” Donghyuck wiped fake tears, and raised his styrofoam box with dinner leftovers before Renjun could punch it to the ground.

“Shut up, this is an actual delicate situation,” Renjun’s scowl hadn’t left his face since Donghyuck’s fit of laughter during lunch time. Still, offhanded comments were better than hearing _i told you so_ in Renjun’s books.

“So, like, what are you gonna do now?” Lucas’ voice came from the speakers of Renjun’s phone, and he considered ending the call.

“Throw myself out of the window, maybe. Where’s Mark anyway?”

Lucas panned the camera to Mark, sitting with both feet resting on his desk, a distracted peace sign as acknowledgement while his eyes barely left the book he was reading. “He’s busy.”

“I’m literally losing my mind here?”

“Well, what can you do?” Mark said somewhere behind the camera, and Lucas shrugged dramatically, almost as an interpreter.

“You’ve got two ways to fix this, I think,” Lucas started carefully, brows knitting as if it was a particularly difficult exam question. “One, is that you leave a fourth letter in that roommate’s locker, and tell him that he actually should pass it on to this Jaemin guy.”

Renjun groaned, unlocking the entrance to their dorms. “I’m not writing a letter ever again, thank you. Give me the second.”

Donghyuck put an arm around Renjun’s shoulders, shaking him lightly. “The second is that you tell him in person,” Renjun huffed, dragging dead weight up the stairs as Lucas screamed _yeah, my man!_ to Donghyuck, and began making noises and finger guns at each other.

He was about to snap at both to shut up, when a rather peculiar sight caught his eyes on the second floor corridor.

“I’m calling you later,” he breathed, ending the call and locking his phone in a speed that left Donghyuck confused.

“Hey, I thought that—” Renjun hurriedly shushed him, and Donghyuck followed his line of sight.

About six doors away, Jaemin and Jeno stood in front of a room’s nameplate, unmoving. Renjun looked around him twice to make sure that was not actually his floor, and that they had not figured out it was him, and that they were not by his room to confront him, and his breathing was coming faster, and he needed to _go_.

Except that Donghyuck misunderstood Renjun’s tugging of his sweater to _resume climbing the stairs, but faster_ as _engage in conversation in my behalf, please_.

“‘Sup,” Renjun wanted to disappear. “What you guys doing?”

“Ah, Hyuck, Injunnie,” both nodded upwards, and Jaemin detached himself from the wall, raising a piece of paper as explanation. “Just, a little treasure hunt.”

Donghyuck laughed, and Renjun still wanted to disappear. “A what now?”

Jeno and Jaemin exchanged a glance, and Jaemin smiled back at them, putting a finger to his lips and winking. “It’s a secret.”

“C’mon, it—”

“Cool,” Renjun’s voice cracked as he put a hand over Donghyuck’s mouth “Cool, cool, nice. Uh,” He slowly inched up the stairs, dragging Donghyuck and still covering his mouth. “Enjoy yourselves?”

On the third floor, Donghyuck twisted himself out of Renjun’s hold, breathing heavily through his mouth. “Now what the _fuck_ was that,” he coughed twice as Renjun grabbed him by the collar to keep marching towards their room. “Have you seriously lost your mind? For real?” Renjun didn’t even turn around, opening and closing drawers at the speed of light, as Donghyuck stood with hands on his knees, catching his breath in the middle of the room. “Like, hey!”

Donghyuck tried grabbing the end of Renjun’s shirt as he opened the door again. Renjun turned around, forcing a blue marker onto his roommate’s hands.

“I need you,” his head felt light “To do me a favor.”

Narrowing his eyes, Donghyuck stepped out of their room to Renjun erasing their nameplate with the sleeve of his shirt. With a quick look towards the stairs, Renjun breathed in. “Please write our names.”

“I think I need to take you to the infirmary—”

“Please!” Renjun flinched at the volume of his voice, and cleared his throat to try once again. “Please. I swear on everything that I’m going to explain it in a second. Just,” another glance at the stairs “Be quick?”

Uncapping the pen with a still concerned expression, Donghyuck quickly wrote their names on the board. “Now what was—”

Renjun pulled Donghyuck inside their room again, scanning the corridor one last time before closing the door, sliding against it until he was sitting on the floor. Looking up at his roommate’s grimace, Renjun wondered just how he was going to phrase it.

 _A treasure hunt_ , Jaemin had called. _A treasure hunt_ , Jaemin had called it _and_ raised the first letter he’d written him. For a second, Renjun thought he had hallucinated it, since that was all the could think about lately, but. The sentences length were the same. The fold wrinkles in the same places, the corner design on the paper the same as in Renjun’s favorite notebook. And behind him Jeno, Jeno was holding two other unfolded pieces of paper with the exact same color and corner design as the one Jaemin was holding.

They had all three of Renjun’s letters in hand, and he had the strongest gut feeling that said treasure hunt included cross-checking the handwriting on them to the handwriting on nameplates in their dorm.

“I really think you’re going crazy now,” was Donghyuck’s answer when Renjun painstakingly relayed his letter conspiracy theory.

“There’s _no_ other explanation, though!”

“Didn’t you say they never really even reacted to the letters? Why would they be after the author now? It doesn’t make any sense.”

And he was right, it really didn’t. Specially so many days after the first letter. It was just that, maybe after the third letter, they had decided to find who was writing them, to ask them to stop doing that once and for all. Or something. Probably.

Donghyuck crossed his arms. “Okay. Let’s say they really are doing that. Why here? There are three whole other dorms.”

Picking on his left hand’s pinky nail, Renjun took a second to answer. “I may have commented on the apology letter that I specially didn’t want to make him uncomfortable since we lived so close,” Renjun looked up, and Donghyuck was staring.

“You’re such a...” a deep sigh “You know what, that’s terrible, but it still doesn’t mean that they would actually be able to recognize your handwriting. Not because of a couple of words on the fucking nameplate.”

He was ready to retort, but a familiar voice sounded muffled through the door. Renjun’s blood was positively running cold. “Grab your toothbrush! Pretend to go brush your teeth!” He whisper-screamed.

“Do it yourself,” he huffed “You’re seriously paranoid.”

They stared at each other for a moment, and Renjun could barely breathe thinking about how they might have already reached the outside of his door. Could they hear anything from the corridor? Did they notice the board had been recently erased? Had the new ink dried yet? Were they going to suspect Renjun?

“I bet you five bucks they’re outside the door. I can’t go checking,” a hiss.

At that, Donghyuck stood up from the chair, stretching, and picked up his toothbrush. “Fine. Five bucks you’re going insane.”

“Oh, hey again,” Jaemin’s smile spread wide on his face when Donghyuck opened the door to reveal the duo right in front of their name plates.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck drawled out the word. “Do you guys... need something?”

“Ah, sorry to be blocking your door, in fact we were about to go—” color rushed to Jeno’s cheeks as he struggled with an answer, but Jaemin still looked unfazed.

“I just thought that we’d have found something by now,” and Renjun could swear his eyes lingered on him for a bit longer, but all the adrenaline from earlier might have been distorting his vision. “But there’s nothing here,” another brilliant smile. “I guess we’ll keep looking.”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck answered as Jaemin dragged Jeno to their next door neighbors down the corridor. “You do that,” and closed the door. Renjun released a breath he didn’t know he was holding as soon as Donghyuck passed the lock as an afterthought. “I swear he’s so fucking weird. You had to go and like _him_? Jeno seems so much more well in the head.”

Renjun frowned. “Jeno?”

“Weren’t you always looking at Jaemin? I thought it would be normal to have switched lanes once or twice, since like, I don’t think they’ve been apart since they met each other,” Renjun’s frown only deepened, and Donghyuck shrugged. “Don’t know, thought that he would’ve caught your attention since looking at Jaemin meant that he was always in the background.”

Though it didn’t make any sense, Donghyuck’s words left him with the unsettling sensation he was forgetting something. Renjun just wasn’t sure how to process that new piece of information, since the first time he remembered ever seeing Jeno around Jaemin was during move-in, with the whole Ms. Evergreen incident. Even though he had been looking at Jaemin all that time.

If he had spent all that time with a laser focus on Jaemin, how come he could now also notice Jeno’s presence around him, instead of ignoring him like he had done before?

Renjun flinched when Donghyuck smacked a hand on his shoulder, a five dollar piece fluttering to his lap. “God, I hate everything about your love life.”

In hindsight, it was all Yangyang’s fault. In even hinderer sight, Renjun should for once stop looking for the nearest person to blame for his less than stellar decisions. But third period on a Thursday wasn’t the time for humble self-reflections.

“Don’t be mad!” Yangyang clasped both hands in prayer against his forehead “Sanha sprained his wrist in P.E. yesterday, and we could only finish copying your report today.”

“But you _knew_ that we haven’t finished it yet,” and it wasn’t that big of a problem, but it wasn’t only Renjun’s grade at stake, and he figured the least he could do was to be upset in Jaemin’s behalf.

“And that’s why,” Yangyang pulled two sheets of paper from behind his back like a particularly bad street magician “We finished the entire thing for you guys! Half yours, half ours.”

Renjun narrowed his eyes. “But mine is still half blank.”

“Well, yeah, as I said, Sanha sprained his wrist, and it was with him.”

And Yangyang no longer looked apologetic at all, waving both papers in front of Renjun’s face and pointing towards the big clock above the blackboard. Renjun rolled his eyes, snatching the papers and sitting down with a sigh.

So, honestly, maybe it was actually Sanha’s fault.

“If we were in a cartoon, I think steam would be coming out from your ears,” Jaemin laughed, pulling his chair closer to Renjun.

“Don’t talk. We’ve only got four minutes left,” he hissed, and Jaemin snorted.

“More like three and a half.”

“You’re making it worse!” Renjun yelped, turning the paper to fill the last question as Mr. Kim entered the classroom. “Go take this thing to Yangyang before he tries to blame _us_ for submitting it late.”

“Yes, sir,” and if in the rush to finish the lab assignment Renjun had momentarily forgotten who he was talking to, Jaemin’s low amused tone and closeness while answering made him remember. He cleared his throat, and hoped Jaemin didn’t notice the goosebumps on his skin.

Partnering with what he was pretty sure was the unattainable love of his life made every single nerve in Renjun’s body go haywire at all times. It really didn’t help that Jaemin was still always so nice to him, despite his rather constant questionable behavior.

 _He might be flirting_ , Mark had said in one of the calls, because ever since Donghyuck was let in the secret of Renjun’s love life, the both of them took great joy in commenting every aspect of it as if it was a football game. _It honestly crossed my mind_ , was Donghyuck’s answer then, _he calls him_ Injunnie _and kinda looks at and talks to him as if he’d eat him alive,_ and Renjun lost the wrestling match to end that phone call miserably, his roommate giggling while fleeing to the top bunk. _Injun’s ears look two seconds away from exploding. I think he never considered that._

And he hadn’t. Because it was ridiculous to even think about it, and Renjun should know better from all that time spent just observing, but whenever Jaemin got close like that, the particular phone call would come to mind. He hoped his hair could cover the tip of his ears.

“Did you copy Yangyang’s report?” Jeno leaned on Jaemin’s side of the desk during the last minutes of self study. “Why didn’t you ask for mine and Shotaro’s? I had it with me.”

It was such a fairly innocuous conversation, that Renjun actively stopped himself from counting the three minutes left of the period by clicking his pen. Of course he was nervous around Jaemin, that was his default state — but since the love letter fiasco, Renjun also couldn’t sit still around Jeno at all. It was ridiculous, but he was certain that if he made eye contact with the guy, Jeno would immediately know he was the author.

Two minutes left.

“Mhm,” Jaemin stretched slowly “I let Yangyang borrow our report, but he didn’t give it back in time. It was a favor return? Kinda,” with his things all packed ready to leave, Renjun wanted no part in any conversation between those roommates, but Jaemin’s hand landing on his shoulder involuntarily dragged him in. “Injunnie told me not to borrow. It’s not like we wanted to copy someone else’s report.”

Jeno tilted his head at Renjun, and he mistakenly made eye contact, just to quickly turn away. Renjun could still feel Jeno’s eyes on him, as if waiting for him to join the conversation, so he cleared his throat. “Yeah,” a voice crack, and he cleared his throat again “But it’s no big deal.”

Jeno’s eyes turned into crescent moons. “Don’t let him get away with deciding things like that again,” he stage-whispered, and Renjun frowned at the loop in his stomach. One minute.

Jaemin’s hand on Renjun’s shoulder pressed down slightly, and Renjun’s soul was positively about to leave his body. “Don’t trash-talk about me to my partner. Not cool.”

“Ever asked him if he doesn’t wanna trash-talk you?” Jeno’s tone was teasing, playful, and if Renjun wasn’t so keen on staring at the seconds pointer on the clock, he might’ve been able to check whether Jaemin answered with his signature smirk.

The bell rang.

Under normal circumstances, Renjun might’ve been able to rush out of the classroom, half whispered goodbyes, and go on with his day. Having Jaemin’s hand fall from his shoulder to his wrist after standing up, not letting go of his hold, though, was not a normal circumstance at all in his dictionary.

“Hm, I, uh, gotta—”

“Do you?”

“Huh?” he wasn’t even walking yet, but he was already breathless. Jaemin’s hand on his wrist wouldn’t let go, thumb making soft circles under the sleeve. He looked from Jaemin to Jeno, and back to Jaemin. Surely that was not a normal thing to do, but both set of eyes were focused on Renjun and not on whatever it was that Jaemin was doing to his wrist, so it might actually be normal to him.

“Do you wanna trash-talk me?”

The hand was still there, and Renjun’s head was spinning.

“No,” a breath “No. No, why would I? Nah, Jaemin is, he’s, Jaemin— is great,” not nearly close to everything he wanted to say about Jaemin, but when Jeno let out a chuckle he thought he was in the clear. Except that Jaemin chose that moment to let go of Renjun’s wrist, slowly sliding his hand down as if to interlock their fingers, but ultimately letting it fall. His smile was just as bright as Renjun had ever seen.

Don’t get him wrong — Renjun was still convinced that Sanha was the one to blame for everything. And he made sure to say so when Sanha stopped by their lunch table to share with Yangyang the grade they’d gotten for the report (and consequently, the grade Renjun and Jaemin had gotten as well).

 _Don’t mind him,_ was what Yangyang had said then, making absentminded shooing motions, _he’s been having a bad case of senioritis since the beginning of the month,_ and _losing his mind_ had been Chenle’s addition in a whisper, to which Sanha only nodded, confused still.

At that point, they all thought he’d gone crazy, and Renjun often wondered if that was really the case. He was more than inclined to believe his friends lately, but then certain things would happen that enforced just how right he was about, well, everything.

Such as Jaemin ambushing him by his locker.

“Holy shit,” Renjun breathed, nearly jumping out of his skin when he closed his locker’s door to reveal Jaemin leaning against the side of it. “Oh my God, you scared me,” and for the first time, his nervous laughter around Jaemin was completely justified.

In Renjun’s catalog of Jaemin’s smiles, the current one on his face was a new addition. Not exactly the cunning smile, not exactly the pleased smile, and there would still be some sort of emotion missing even if it was those two combined.

That was also not exactly what Renjun wanted to think about at that moment, but if nothing distracted him from the way Jaemin stood in front of him, resting a hand next to his head like the perfect shoujo manga protagonist of Renjun’s dreams, he’d have done something stupid by now. But neither the catalog of Jaemin smiles nor his shoujo manga dreams could have prepared Renjun for what would come next.

“So, guess I found you.”

A pause. “Do you... want to borrow something?”

Jaemin laughed, shaking his head. To say Renjun was confused was a severe understatement, specially with the sharp look in Jaemin’s eyes. Maybe Donghyuck was right, and Jaemin was indeed a bit... odd. Renjun opened his mouth again to try something else once Jaemin offered no answer, only to be cut short by Jaemin’s raised hand.

“Isn’t it you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Renjun deserved about a thousand congratulatory pats on the back from the sheer confidence of his lie. Because the way Jaemin was holding Renjun’s first love letter in front of his face left no room to wonder what he was talking about.

Jaemin pouted, humming, and let the hand that was by Renjun’s head fall to rummage through his open backpack. Renjun figured he had three entire seconds to come up with some sort of reasonable, convincing lie, before he ended up having to call his parents to transfer schools, preferably somewhere far away, like back to his home town.

But none of the lies would work, not when Jaemin raised their most recent lab report. Side by side, no one in their right mind could deny that the rounded, always-below-the-line commas and periods, the all capital T’s even in the middle of words, or the forty-five-degree flare on the O’s were written by the same person.

Renjun wondered how worse could his situation probably get if he fainted then and there.

“Jaemin I can explain I—”

“Ah-ah,” Jaemin clicked his tongue, putting a finger to Renjun’s mouth and effectively shutting up even his thoughts. “Don’t worry, I read the other letters, too.”

Was it too much to ask to be struck by lightening? Just once? “I... oh my God,” Renjun burrowed his head in his hands, and wondered just how his skin hadn’t melted off yet with the way his face was burning. “Jaemin, listen, I’m so sorry, I’m— I don’t even—”

“What are you sorry about?”

A moment. Renjun raised his head. “Huh?”

“I thought you’d be glad?” Jaemin looked mildly confused, and Renjun couldn’t fathom in which reality anyone would ever consider that having their crush find their anonymously written love letters could be something to be glad about. Maybe Jaemin really was a tad bit insane.

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, aren’t you glad I was the one to find out who you are?” perhaps not insane, only a bit sadistic. Renjun really was starting to see Jaemin in a completely different light. “You know. Like, lab partners with the roommate and all?”

“Excuse me?”

Jaemin looked throughly puzzled, and Renjun felt positively light in the head. “Aren’t I right? I thought it’d be great news to you. Since we’re comfortable with each other, and I’m Jeno’s roommate and kind of his best friend too if I’m honest.”

“What does Jeno...” but Renjun’s mind caught up with the situation before Jaemin could even open his mouth again.

“No, he doesn’t know. Yet. I mean, I could tell him if you wanted me to? But I thought it was best to let you know I’m, hm, at your service as personal Cupid if you want it to work.”

Renjun prayed he could get struck by lightening twice.

“I’m in shock,” Yangyang repeated for the nth time, staring at Renjun like he couldn’t even see him. “No, I’m actually speechless.”

“Kinda have to agree with him on that one,” Donghyuck said quietly from the top bunk, and Renjun wondered if he should hurl him out of the window or himself first.

It hadn’t been on Renjun’s plans to tell Yangyang about his (lack of) love life so soon — he never actually considered telling anyone about it at all — but much like everything else in Renjun’s life lately, things didn’t go according to plan.

So when Yangyang found him in the common room of the third floor, crying in front of the mini kitchen’s open faucet, tearing his (and Jaemin’s) 92.5% lab report to shreds, there wasn’t much Renjun could do. Yangyang had taken one look at him, asking _is it because of Jaemin?_ with so much pity in his voice that Renjun could only cry harder. Only after retelling half the story of his unsuccessful love life, and after Donghyuck arrived to see a frozen Yangyang mechanically patting Renjun’s back, that he learned Yangyang had meant _is it because Jaemin is upset that you guys didn’t get a 95%?_ and not _is it because all your previously zero romantic chances with Jaemin have now come to the negatives?_

Alas.

They had since relocated to Renjun’s and Donghyuck’s room, before the other guys from their year could find Renjun in that state and start asking questions. Then he cried a bit more, ate two packets of Donghyuck’s chips, tried to pluck all the leaves of Ms. Evergreen, cried again, drank some water, and properly relayed the events of that afternoon, which led to Yangyang’s current disbelief.

“You’re dumb as hell, but after all that, what the fuck was keeping you from telling him the letters weren’t meant for Jeno?”

Renjun hiccuped. “That was the first time we talked for so long about something other than class,” both groaned, and Renjun hurriedly added “Besides, I made it clear in the letters that I was talking about him. That I started liking him when I thought he looked like an angel during summer with blond hair?”’

“He dyed his hair back then in solidarity with Jeno. Seriously like, days apart,” Yangyang stole the third chips pack from Renjun’s hands.

“Yeah. They wanted to suspend Jeno for breaking the dress code, or something. Jaemin thought it was stupid to be suspended since he’d done it for a modeling gig, so he dyed his hair like him.”

A moment. “W-well, I also talked about how gentle he was, like, helping to train a service dog last year and all.”

Yangyang looked up for a second, undoubtedly sharing a look with Donghyuck, and Renjun started fidgeting. “That was Jeno’s aunt’s dog. She had to travel for a week, and couldn’t make the trip out of town to leave it with his parents.”

“How he helped renovate the choir practice room? His first place art prize?”

“Jeno founded that volunteering club as a class assignment, and the art competition was a joint group project.”

“Let me guess, Jaemin paired up with Jeno in it,” Renjun had his head on his hands, and Yangyang looked utterly unconcerned eating Donghyuck’s chips away. How was it possible for two people to be attached to the hip like that, and just how much of a tunnel vision Renjun had to completely ignore all of Jeno’s presence in Jaemin’s life?

“Actually, Mark was in that group too,” Donghyuck hummed. “And another senior from Mark’s class I don’t remember. Or two? I think it was a five people project.”

“Oh my God,” another hiccup “Then it really did sound like I’m Jeno’s secret admirer.”

“Why would you put it in the locker in the first place though, like why didn’t you just slip the thing into his backpack and avoided all that?”

“Could’ve put it in his desk too—”

“Okay!” Renjun stood up “Okay, okay, okay. Alright, I know. It’s not like I haven’t considered everything that could’ve gone better after I found out it wasn’t his locker. Give me a break.”

Donghyuck jumped down from the top bunk, sitting on the floor next to Yangyang to eat the remaining chips. With them looking up at Renjun, eating snacks in silence like that, Renjun really supposed he was providing quite the show. A sigh, and he plopped down on his bed, extending a hand to get more chips.

“So, what now? Are you just gonna let him think you’re into his roommate so he’ll talk to you more?”

Bingo. Color rushed to Renjun’s cheeks, and once again he wished Donghyuck was just a bit less sharp.

“Right now I just need to figure out how I’m gonna get out of a date, really.”

“YOU LET HIM SET UP A—” Renjun hurled forward to cover Yangyang’s mouth, shushing him enough to sound like a knock-off sick snake.

“Shut the fuck up! They live almost right below us!”

Yangyang struggled out of Renjun’s grasp, expression of shock looking like it was engraved in his face since the minute he entered the common room. “How did you let him set up a date? Are you insane?”

“It’s more like,” Renjun pouted, no words seeming good enough to describe the mess he’d gotten himself into “Jeno doesn’t technically know about it.”

“Well, whatever that means,” Donghyuck shrugged, crossing his legs “How many days do we have to come up with an excuse?”

It was cute, really. The way his friends were so invested, and only mildly judgmental of Renjun’s situation — and not for the reasons he once feared they would be. So much that hearing Donghyuck use _we_ when trying to solve a problem that was very much only Renjun’s, made him even more embarrassed to let them know the entire thing. But both of them were still waiting for Renjun’s answer, and there weren’t many other things that could make his situation any worse than it already was, so.

“Until noon tomorrow.”


	3. Chapter 3

Waiting on the platform, Renjun let the third east train pass. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and as much as he wanted to check it, if he saw Jaemin’s message of _did you get there already?_ he’d cave.

There was a southeast train on that line coming in four minutes, followed by another east train two minutes later. He had four whole minutes to decide whether to jump on that train and head back to school, or to wait two more and arrive at the location Jaemin sent him. The first option would risk Jaemin’s disappointment, while the second option would risk his own.

 _There’s nothing wrong with meeting new people,_ was Yangyang’s verdict the previous night. _Jaemin also knows that it’s not a given you and Jeno are gonna end up together._

And he was right. It wasn’t like Renjun was on his way to ask for Jeno’s hand in marriage, even if that’s what it felt like when he stepped into the east train. He had to admit that Jaemin was pretty crafty with his scenarios, though, coming up with a whole plan for Renjun to _accidentally_ bump into Jeno at the cat café his club volunteered occasionally, right at the end of his shift.

Renjun wondered if he was dating Jaemin, what kind of romantic outings he would come up with — and then promptly slapped his own cheek, startling the lady sitting next to him. He was going to this date-not-date thing, and he was going to spend a maximum of ten excruciatingly slow minutes on it, and after he was going to say _sorry, I don’t think I like Jeno anymore_ to Jaemin, and then figure out where to go from there.

Except that it was so much easier said than done, when Jeno put a pastel pink menu with tiny doodles of cat paws in front of Renjun. “Welcome to Wonderland Café! We have recently added new muffin flavors to our menu, but please remember to not feed the cats. On weekends our student dis— Oh,” Jeno smiled, and Renjun could feel the tip of his ears warming. “Hey.”

“Yeah, hi,” he couldn’t do this. Jeno had his hair slightly gelled up, and was wearing a light beige apron filled with pastel yellow stars and pastel pink hearts. He wasn’t even sure if he could make it through the first five minutes.

“Wow, I’ve never seen anyone from school here. A-as a customer, I mean,” he scratched the back of his neck, and Renjun wondered if he felt the same suffocating awkwardness. “My club, we volunteer here sometimes. I mean I’m,” a deep breath, and Renjun was certain Jeno felt it too “I’m volunteering, here. Right now.”

Renjun wanted to leave. “Ah.”

“So, let me know when you’re ready to order something? They give a fifteen percent discount if you bring your school ID.”

He hummed, and Jeno changed the weight of his his feet, bouncing slightly before nodding to himself and going back to the counter. Renjun really should be leaving soon.

 **why do you look so stiff >:(** his phone vibrated.

_what?_

**you’re looking like a real uncomfortable statue >:((**

Renjun checked twice that the number was indeed Jaemin’s, and discreetly looked around, but there was only a lady brushing one of the cats next to the entrance, and two middle school girls taking pictures of their meal on the table by the window. And Jeno, giving a short confused wave from the counter. Renjun snapped his eyes back to the phone.

_are you spying on me??_

**i just wanted to make sure the date was gonna go well ^^**

**and give you some pointers, since you looked really awkward talking to him just now :3**

_where even are you_

Jaemin wasn’t in the café. Besides the two girls’ and his own, the other four tables were empty, and the crouching lady was occupying the whole entrance hall. Unless he was hiding behind the counter — after their interactions over the last few days, was something Renjun wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Jaemin actually did — but even with Jeno sitting on a stool, the front couldn’t even cover the span of his legs, so.

**LOLL stop looking around like that!**

**i’m right across the street**

Renjun’s heart missed a beat at that, but even if he wasn’t nearsighted, the tinted windows of the restaurant across the street would still cover Jaemin.

_well I don’t see you, so this feels super weird_

**then focus on talking to jenjen and forget I’m here!! his shift is about to end......**

He choked on air at the nickname, and slightly turned sideways, hoping Jaemin wouldn’t see that. If he even had a nickname for Renjun, of course Jaemin would have one for his best friend. Still, hearing — reading? — the guy he was into calling someone else so intimately further dampened his mood.

In short, Renjun was having an awful end of the morning. He was underdressed for the changing weather, in a pseudo-date that only one of the parties was aware of, being ominously monitored by his crush so he couldn’t even leave the place when he wanted. And none of the cats had approached him since he got there.

“Ready to order?”

“Uh?”

Jeno pointed with a pen to the counter. “My shift here’s actually about to end. If you don’t have your ID but want the student discount, I can still give you one if you order now.”

Renjun scowled. None of that was Jeno’s fault, really. He shouldn’t be so hostile towards a classmate, specially towards a clueless one that was only stuck doing his job.

“The, uh, muffin combo. And one— purr-ple latte?” Jeno chuckled and Renjun’s ears went pink again.

“Paw-some. I’ll bring it right away,” he had to cover his smile with a hand at Jeno’s answering cat pun, the bit of laughter that escaped his mouth made Jeno’s eyes turn into crescent moons as he replaced the menu in front of Renjun with a napkin and cutlery.

It was also for some reason just generally hard to be upset at anything or anyone when next to Jeno. From the little he’d known him, Renjun always felt a comfortable sense of calmness and warmth from Jeno’s demeanor — which he’d recently found rather glaring, especially in contrast with Jaemin’s bolder, sharper presence.

When the three muffins with white and dark chocolate cat ears were put on the table, along a steaming cup of lilac liquid with whiskers made of foam, Renjun made an impulse decision before his brain could go over it twice.

“There you go,” Jeno wiped his hands on the pastel apron, and started undoing its ribbon. “If you need anything else, just ring the bell on the counter— the owner’s in the kitchen.”

“Your shift is over?” Renjun turned slightly around as Jeno made his way back to the counter, folding the apron and dropping his name tag on a box. He hummed in agreement, checking his phone for a second before turning back with a polite smile. Renjun’s skin was itching. “Do you... mind keeping me company?”

The words tumbled out of his mouth, and Jeno froze for a second. A thousand different things spun through Renjun’s mind in the couple of seconds that followed, but there really was nothing he should be worried about. They weren’t close, but Jeno wasn’t dumb, and Renjun knew he could also hear the implications of the request. It was just that, through all of Renjun’s breakdowns, his focus had been solely on Jaemin the entire time — he didn’t even consider that, well, Jeno could simply reject him and right away put an end to it all. And for some reason, Renjun’s stomach twisted uncomfortably at the possibility.

But Jeno only raised an eyebrow, pensive, and nodded shortly to himself once, twice, before looking up again at Renjun. “Sure?”

Something bloomed in Renjun’s chest when Jeno sat down across from him with a small smile, and he forced himself to cough, quickly downing a third of the hot lilac cup. “Thanks. I actually don’t think I can finish these muffins by myself.”

“Oh, you might wanna start from this one, then,” Jeno said while turning the middle muffin so the chocolate eyes and whiskers faced Renjun.

The whole thing wasn’t nearly as insufferable as he’d braced himself for it to be. Renjun ate the middle muffin, and then the white chocolate one, Jeno picking on the sides of the last muffin while they talked about classes and extracurriculars. As the two middle school girls left, and the other lady got herself a bagel and one other cat around her, the topic changed from the new dorms, to senior year, to college plans. Renjun’s phone vibrated once or twice, but as Jeno described how he started taking shifts at the café, and one of the cats finally got around to rest by their table, he found it difficult to try paying attention to anything else.

Jeno was soft-spoken but quick-witted, and held enough eye contact to make Renjun flustered despite the aura of calmness that surrounded him. There was a pretty mole under his eye, and he reacted to Renjun’s unfunny comments much better than any of his friends. Which was all incredibly unfair, because it only added up to the thing Renjun was trying his damned hardest not to focus on, which was the fact that Jeno was devastatingly handsome and Renjun was unfortunately a sucker for good looks.

Clearing his throat once again to erase the observations on Jeno’s looks from his mind before he started blushing, Renjun finished his now cold latte.

“But it doesn’t make sense if the place is full of slopes,” he argued, and Jeno pouted, as if reconsidering his plans of building his own bike once in college “Unless you plan on making it an electric one?”

“Even then, I think it’d be like a workout. Probably won’t have as much free time for that by then,” Renjun hummed, and watched Jeno as he split the rest of the muffin in half, and put one part closer to Renjun as he ate the other.

“Why, thanks,” he teased, and Jeno’s mockingly innocent head tilt really had no business being as cute as it was. A lump rose to his throat again at that, and Renjun would surely have said something embarrassing right then if the inner sliding doors of the café didn’t choose that moment to open.

“Ah, here you are,” and all color drained from Renjun’s face as Jaemin dragged a chair to their table.

“Yo,” Jeno looked up “What are you doing here?” though his face looked impassive, the subtle change in tone made Renjun wonder if Jeno was truly confused, and right next wonder just how he was now picking up on tiny verbal clues of someone he was technically not even close to yet.

“Thought you had an early shift today, but since I know the café closes at three and you weren’t answering your phone,” Jaemin looked at Renjun at that, casually resting his own phone on the edge of the table. “I decided to drop by.”

Renjun took a second to absorb those words, and promptly felt his ears going pink. The bagel lady was long gone, only one of the five cats was still awake, and the fairy lights under the counter were already turned off. Only the three of them were customers there now, the clock on Jaemin’s phone marking ten minutes to three in the afternoon.

The misplaced sudden burst of happiness for having been with Jeno for nearly two hours confused him a little, specially when he felt it even before the nervousness of having Jaemin sitting right by his side. He stuffed the last of the muffin in his mouth to avoid thinking harder about it.

“Oh, yeah yeah, the new winter coat similar to mine that you wanted to get.”

Jaemin crossed his arms, slouching a bit on the chair to rest his feet at the base of the table. “Yeah, so I wanted to know when you get off the clock,” and then looked up “Didn’t know Injunnie would be here at this time.”

Sure, he was usually way too overtly conscious of everything whenever Jaemin was nearby. But he wondered if he was really hallucinating the coldness in his words, the stiffness in his voice.

Jeno stood up right away, saying he’d take the tray and the cup to the kitchen, and the entire minute of Jaemin’s uncomfortable silence that followed was about to make Renjun’s stomach upset until Jeno dropped his backpack on the chair.

“All ready,” Jaemin stood up as well, and Renjun started fidgeting when none of them moved towards the door. Jeno looked from Jaemin to Renjun, back to Jaemin, and settled on Renjun. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Huh?”

Jaemin sighed, turning only his head, his back still to Renjun. “Don’t you wanna come shop for a bit?”

“I,” his head was spinning, and he needed much more than the five seconds he was given to try making sense of the entire situation “I’m gonna stay back. Haven’t even paid yet,” and Jeno’s surprised laughter caught Renjun off guard.

“Ah, that’s right, forgot to say I,” he scratched the back of his neck “The owner just told me it’s on the house for you.”

A moment. “What?”

Jeno shrugged “She was just surprised to see I was still here when I brought her the tray. Told me to tell you to come again.”

That was. A lot. Renjun wasn’t sure what exactly to answer, or where to look, or what to do. He felt his brain was going to melt if he didn’t catch a breather within the next minute. But Jaemin decided it all for him when he headed to the sliding doors, turning back once again. “So?”

He wasn’t sure whether the question was directed at him or Jeno, but as the three of them got out into the street, it sounded like the answer Jaemin wanted.

“So, the date was nice. I don’t get why you’re upset about it,” it was a sight to behold, Donghyuck doing homework on a Saturday evening, only half listening to whatever Renjun had to say.

“I’m not upset about it. It just wasn’t a date,” Donghyuck raised an eyebrow at him, not even turning his face away from the book. Renjun felt a slight sense of deja vu. “And it wasn’t, honestly! Jeno had no idea about it. A one-sided date isn’t a real date.”

Donghyuck sighed, dropping the pen for a moment and swiveling around in his chair. “You went to see him.”

“Technically, yeah.”

“And you asked him out.”

“Like, I see what you’re saying, but—”

“ _And_ he agreed,” he continued talking over Renjun. “Not only he agreed for an exclusive meal, just the two of you, who barely know each other, but he _also_ stayed with you for fuck many hours,” Renjun worried his bottom lip, trying to find the best words to convey why his roommate was still wrong about it. “Did I mention yet how he also paid for your lunch?”

“No, that was just the owner being overly nice to someone from his class.”

“But did you pay for the thing?” Renjun shook his head. “And who was it that arranged things to turn out like that? Exactly,” Donghyuck looked way too smug about it, and Renjun kind of wanted to argue with him just for the sake of arguing. “I hope you’re not really thinking that he bought for a second that you ended up in a specific fucking cat café downtown at the very same time his shift was about to end just by pure coincidence. He knew what saying ‘yes’ to keeping you company meant.”

“Oh my God,” Renjun sat up straight “Do you think he thinks I’m a stalker?”

Donghyuck snorted, swiveling back to the desk. “You’re really too naive. I bet Jaemin had already told him everything about this plan of his before you even got there,” a shrug “That, or he told him as soon as you guys got back.”

“I... don’t think Jaemin would do that.”

“Mhm,” Donghyuck picked up the pen again, turning a page on the textbook. “Suit yourself.”

 _No_ , Renjun wanted to retaliate, _he really wouldn’t_. It was only after they’d gotten back to school that Renjun opened his unread messages from the afternoon, three of them from Jaemin. _OMG DID YOU JUST ASK HIM OUTTTT_ he had sent exactly at noon, with a line of star emojis. The second message an hour and a half later, with _ohh looks like it’s all going well_ , followed by a _you two really hit it off, huh._ about ten minuted later, and the next thing Jaemin had done was to physically show up at the café.

There were many weird details about the whole situation, that Renjun was only beginning to unpack. Firstly, it sounded like Jaemin and Jeno already had fixed plans for the afternoon, so it felt somewhat odd for Jaemin to chose that time to help Renjun set up a date. Not that Renjun actually wanted one, no, but for all Jaemin knew, the date was supposed to be a real thing. Then, there was the whole standoffish atmosphere right before they left the café, and Renjun felt slightly sick remembering Jaemin’s closed off expression. He’d never really seen Jaemin angry, only annoyed at best — but he supposed that if he were to get upset, Jaemin would be the type to act cold and sulk in silence like that — and Renjun hated even the possibility that Jaemin might’ve felt like that because of him.

But Renjun said none of that to Donghyuck, for reasons that weren’t even entirely clear to himself, but mostly because he needed to digest it all first. Specially since not even ten minutes after that whole ordeal, Jaemin had casually put an arm on Renjun’s back while walking around the shopping district, hand resting on his nape and likely feeling all the goosebumps on Renjun’s skin every time he absentmindedly brushed the hair on the back of his neck. He said none of that, because then there would be questions, the real uncomfortable ones Donghyuck was unsettling good at asking. Just didn’t think he was ready to share what Jaemin getting him ice cream, Jeno buying the shirt Renjun said looked good on him, Jaemin spending minutes to arrange a perfect backdrop for a picture of him, and Jeno saving him a seat on the train instead of taking it for himself made Renjun feel. He wasn’t ready because he didn’t know yet how that made him feel.

But not telling Donghyuck, meant also not telling Yangyang, or Mark — which in turn, meant not telling Lucas, and so Renjun was suddenly back to spring of the previous year, when he had to deal alone with the overwhelming things he felt for Jaemin, never getting an outsider’s perspective on any of it.

He’d surely taken the involvement of his friends for granted, specially when he found himself sitting on the carpet of Jaemin’s room after class, because that would mean having to explain the promise Renjun had made that Saturday afternoon.

While Jaemin had initially inherited Ms. Evergreen and Chenle had inherited a barely used dorm-approved kettle, Renjun got the majority of Mark’s study guides (more like he kept them to himself out of the box Mark labeled to throw away). That particular slip-up when the topic of new dorms invariably made its way back into the conversation was the reason Renjun would probably end up with a bruise on his ankle. He just really, really could not uncross his legs at the moment and risk accidentally kicking Jaemin, sitting way too close for comfort, and most definitely leaning into Renjun’s personal space while he flipped through Mark’s history notes.

“Did you see how he switches languages every few paragraphs?” Jaemin sounded genuinely amused, but Renjun could only muster a choked _uh-huh_ as he tried to not think about the hand resting basically against his thigh. “It’s so funny,” and he wondered how could Jaemin possibly feel comfortable studying in a position like that.

As it would turn out, he wasn’t actually studying at all when he threw the bounded pages on the rug and turned to face Renjun, who feigned ignorance for a few moments pretending to read through Mark’s literature notes.

“So tell me,” that was Jaemin’s expectant smile, and Renjun swallowed.

“Tell you what?”

“C’mon, you know why I asked you to come here.”

Did he? “Do I?”

Jaemin stared at him for a moment. “Did you seriously think I wanted Mark’s notes that much? Half of them are in a language I don’t even speak,” he chuckled, and something about that triggered Renjun’s sense of imminent danger. He wondered how convincing was his impression of a message notification on ring, and if he should try doing one right about now. “I want to know how your date with Jeno went so we can plan the next one.”

That caught Renjun off guard. When in the following days neither Jaemin nor Jeno mentioned anything about the Saturday Situation, he was halfway convinced that none of it ever happened, and he hallucinated the whole thing. And he’d have certainly fully convinced himself of that soon, had Jaemin not started waiting for him to go to P.E., and had Jeno not joined him twice in the cafeteria for breakfast and lunch as if they were close friends. Renjun wasn’t sure why it seemed like both of them avoided commenting anything about that afternoon, but as he also made no efforts to talk about it, the roommates might’ve been wondering the same thing about him.

Hearing Jaemin openly bring it up, then, sounded infinitely weird.

“It wasn’t a date,” the tips of Renjun’s ears went pink, and he busied himself organizing the notes in front of them.

“You really don’t have to do that. How long do you think I waited to talk about it where no one would hear? You can be honest,” Jaemin’s voice sounded so eager, and something about how he took all that into consideration before asking Renjun felt so touching, that he really hoped the admiration he felt for Jaemin wasn’t showing on his face.

“Well,” and so Renjun found himself retelling an abridged version of all he’d said to Donghyuck about the lunch days before, just as careful to not mention anything about his confusion regarding Jaemin’s appearance of the afternoon that followed.

Jaemin was a fantastic listener, but he had a quirk of letting his eyes wander every few minutes that must look harmless to everyone but Renjun, because every time Jaemin’s eyes seemed to focus on his hair, or his neck, or his cheeks, Renjun found himself stuttering. He had already gotten used to making eye contact with Jaemin — they’d definitely have failed all three lab assignments so far if he hadn’t — but being put in a non-entirely-academic setting where he had a free pass to just observe him like that was flustering to say the least.

The report (Renjun really had no other name for it) seemed to be very satisfying to Jaemin. Renjun wasn’t sure if he was coming up with ideas while listening, or if he had come up with them beforehand, but Jaemin started relaying his newest plans barely ten seconds after Renjun concluded the story.

None were as elaborate as the first one, though. According to Jaemin, Jeno seemed to talk a lot about Renjun lately already, so no grand, complex plans were needed. _I think he just needs a tiny little push to start liking you, and just another one to admit it too,_ was his conclusion, and Renjun felt a pang of guilt at the words. He’d only been entertaining the idea to have these dates as an excuse to be close to Jaemin, and possibly ending up leading Jeno on wasn’t something he’d like to do.

When Jaemin looked at him like that, though, Renjun found it hard to do anything but agree.

On a Thursday evening, Renjun found himself in quite the odd situation.

Which, frankly speaking, shouldn’t even be a surprise to him anymore. He supposed that wishing for a fairly uneventful senior year jinxed the entire thing for him from the moment he stepped inside school grounds a week too early in the summer. The first month of classes had consisted only of disaster followed by worse disaster, and none of them were even related to his academics. Mostly.

So when Jeno texted him about grabbing dinner downtown before curfew at almost the same time Jaemin sent him a voice-note about having a study session at dinner time in the common room, Renjun wanted to simply turn his phone off and go take a nap.

“Aren’t they roommates?” Yangyang frowned, scrolling through the messages. “Don’t they tell one another what their plans for the day are? Or with whom they’re planning things?”

“Injun never asks me what I’m doing,” Donghyuck teased, putting an arm over Renjun’s shoulder, making him stumble.

Renjun elbowed him on the ribs. “And even so you tell me anyway,” he grumbled, hoping Yangyang’s question was rhetorical, because he’d have quite the complicated answer to it.

The situation was that, since Jeno and Renjun’s second date-not-date, Jaemin stopped bringing up the topic — and the plans — whenever they met. Which, it was a totally fine thing to do in Renjun’s books, but since Jaemin would actually ask to meet with him for the specific purpose of discussing that, only to not utter a single word about it once they were face to face, Renjun was left feeling as if it was all a fever dream.

Not that he felt disappointed about the sudden opportunities to talk about literally anything else, and get to know Jaemin better — no, that was a godsend tailored just for him. It was just that, particularly around the third and fourth date-not-dates, Jaemin stopped mentioning them _completely_.

Even when he asked to meet Renjun right after a date-not-date, even if he showed up while Jeno was still with him, Jaemin would find just about any topic other than what the two might’ve been doing. Renjun was curious whether he also completely avoided it when talking to Jeno too, but Jeno never mentioned finding anything strange, so he held his question in.

In turn, Jaemin’s strange behavior made him unable to ask for advice on how to put an end to his and Jeno’s date-not-date’s. _You realize you could ask any of us, right?_ Mark had told him over the weekend he came down to finish getting his things, to which Donghyuck and Yangyang (and Lucas, over the phone, who asked Mark to call if they talked about Renjun’s love life, as he was too invested on it) agreed. And that was plausible, really, but none of them knew Jeno like Jaemin did, and so even with the best intentions, they couldn’t help him properly figure out a way to do it without damaging his newfound friendship with Jeno.

Because Jeno was a good person. Legitimately. He was kind and attentive, funny in a sort of unintentional way, and had a comforting and trusting aura that Renjun was inexplicably overtly drawn to. And at one point, he started wondering if he really wanted to put an end to what they had.

Which meant that dilemma wasn’t solved at all, and was only replaced by another one instead. _You can’t honestly think he considers you guys’ relationship platonic,_ Donghyuck called him out after a mild breakdown. _What kind of guy would take his friend to romantic activities, in romantic places, at even fucking romantic times of the day— shut up, golden hours and late mornings are romantic as fuck— only the two, alone, just to spend some quality time with his homie? Injun wake up,_ he was sure his face was burning by then, but Donghyuck scoffed, continuing, _He’s not dense, and you’re not the only non-straight person in this school._

Renjun wasn’t entirely sure if that helped his situation or not.

In fact, he kind of thought he opened a new Pandora’s box over the previous weekend, when he visited Jeno at the end of his shift at the cat café for the first time completely unprompted, and Jeno held his hand during the entire train ride back to school. And he felt perfectly comfortable like that, leading to his current predicament.

“Do you want me to type out a reply to Jeno saying you gotta study tonight?”

“No?” Donghyuck drawled out the word, stealing Renjun’s phone from Yangyang’s hands. “He obviously needs advice on how to tell Jaemin he’s got a dinner date with Jeno.”

“Why would he? Isn’t Injun into Jaemin?” Yangyang pressed his key fob against the monitor of their dorm front doors, and Donghyuck looked at Renjun for what felt like a very long time before locking the phone and putting it back on Renjun’s hands. Donghyuck didn’t answer the question.

“Of course I am,” Renjun huffed, climbing two steps at a time.

“Then that might be a problem,” Yangyang muttered once he caught up with Renjun, frozen at the start of the third floor’s corridor. Donghyuck passed by the both of them, room keys jingling.

“Yo Jeno,” he greeted, and Renjun swallowed. “What you doing here?”

“Oh, I was waiting to see if— Hey,” Renjun wanted to cover his ears, surely turning pink over the tone change in Jeno’s voice when he noticed him. “I was wondering if you got my message?”

“I did,” and he wondered if Yangyang’s scandalized expression had anything to do with the involuntary softness in his voice when talking to Jeno too.

Jeno bounced slightly in place for a second, and Renjun really had no reason to find that as adorable as he did. “Then would you want to—”

“He’s busy,” Yangyang pushed Renjun in the direction of the open room door “He’s gotta study tonight,” and Donghyuck snatched Yangyang’s arms, pulling him into the room while kicking Renjun’s shins out of it.

“No he doesn’t. And he didn’t have dinner yet!” the door slammed against Renjun’s back, leaving him face to face with Jeno in the empty corridor. He looked mildly confused at the whole thing, before settling his eyes on Renjun with a questioning look. Renjun sighed.

“They’re crazy. Don’t mind them,” Jeno gave a slow nod, as if it still didn’t make any sense but he was willing to let it go either way.

“So, uh, there’s this new burger place— it’s not downtown, it’s kinda closer to the school— so I was wondering if you wanted to... go? With me?”

A moment passed, and normally where a thousand different thoughts would swarm Renjun’s head over the infinite possibilities of what a yes and what a no would entail, there was only comfortable silence. Renjun smiled.

“Sounds like a plan,” and he didn’t mind when Jeno scooted closer to hold his hand before even leaving school grounds either.

After all his inner turmoils the past few weeks, Renjun expected that being forced into the same space as Jaemin and Jeno at the same time would be slightly suffocating. What he didn’t expect, was hating with every fiber of his being the closing train doors as he and Jaemin sent Jeno home for the weekend. He was supposed to leave right after last period on Friday, but Jaemin found this vintage arcade place downtown that he just _had_ to show Jeno and Renjun. And so when they took the last train back to school and Jeno hadn’t even prepared a backpack to go home yet, he made them promise to go with him to the station after breakfast the next morning.

Donghyuck had almost broken Renjun’s phone in half when the alarm sounded at 7am on a Saturday, but Renjun gleefully stumbled through the dim room while changing to meet the other two.

Jeno placed his backpack on the floor, even though all chairs were empty at that time in the cafeteria. Jaemin whined in between bites the whole breakfast, one eye shut and the other half open, claiming Jeno owed him one for getting up so early. Jeno exchanged a glance with Renjun before smiling every time he said so, and at one point Renjun wondered why that wholly mundane moment made him want to sing out of pure happiness.

“That was cute,” Jaemin said, pensive, while he draped his coat over the back of the chair. Renjun belatedly realized he had simply followed Jaemin back into his room, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Jaemin made no comments on the way Renjun made himself comfortable on the corner of the bottom bunk, as he always did when he was there. Renjun still didn’t know which bed belong to whom.

“Huh?”

“You and Jen,” he gestured in the air, before flopping down onto the bottom bunk as well. “The hand thing. It’s cute.”

Renjun’s neck went scarlet. He wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but now he realized how impossible it must’ve been to miss it. Jeno had even changed the shoulders of his backpack to walk holding Renjun’s hand all the way to the station.

“Oh my God,” Renjun tried burying his face in his hands, but Jaemin pried them away, laughing.

“Why are you embarrassed? It was adorable,” and he didn’t know how to react, frozen with conflicting emotions. His blood ran cold with the knowledge that his crush had seen him holding someone else’s hand and found it _cute_ , at the same time he preened under the compliment that apparently he and Jeno looked good together. Overriding it all, though, was his utter confusion over hearing Jaemin comment on anything regarding Renjun and Jeno together, when he seemed to avoid that topic like the plague. Had Renjun really only imagined it?

“It’s not like that,” he had the urge to deny, but his words sounded hesitant, and of course Jaemin caught up on it, eyebrows raising.

“Oh?” he teased. “Does that mean the two of you are an item now?”

“I _told_ you, it’s not like that,” Jaemin’s hand was still loosely holding one of Renjun’s wrists, and his face still felt way too warm.

Jaemin scoffed. “What, are you gonna tell me you just go on dates like that and hold hands with anyone?”

“It’s just,” Renjun tried again, weaker. He momentarily thanked the fact that Jaemin hadn’t brought up that subject since basically day one, because talking about doing romantic acts with anyone other than Jaemin, as well as rejecting his time with Jeno, was mentally exhausting to him. “Just walking around. And the hand thing.”

Jaemin slowly tilted his head, in silence for a moment, and Renjun didn’t know what to make of it. “You’re telling me that’s all you guys done?”

A pause.

“What do you mean?” Renjun asked, puzzled, and after a heartbeat Jaemin laughed again, hand momentarily tightening on Renjun’s wrist.

“You’ve been dating for— what? Almost two months? And you’re acting embarrassed like that as if even hand holding is a new thing between the two of you?”

Renjun didn’t think it was possible for him to blush any harder. “It is,” he muttered.

“What?”

“It is,” he started, louder “A new thing. Between us.”

Jaemin’s mouth dropped in a small ‘o’ shape, eyebrows still raised. He blinked once, twice, before giving an incredulous smile. “You’re saying Jen never made a move,” and something in the way Jaemin said that made Renjun want to defend him.

“Maybe he’s just respecting my space, you know. We’ve never properly talked about it.”

“And maybe he’s scared to do it because you’re too oblivious.”

Renjun frowned, sitting up properly as a bit of anger started bubbling in him. After all that trouble to keep himself out of it, just who Jaemin thought he was to try analyzing whatever fucking relationship Jeno had with him? “Hm? How so?”

Jaemin looked at him for a moment, really looked at him. Renjun wanted to lash out that none of that was really any of his business, and each passing second where Jaemin only stared without saying anything only served to make Renjun’s anger grow. Then, faster than he could process, Jaemin tightened the hold on his wrist again, and used it as leverage to lurch forward, leaning towards Renjun before he could get out of the way. Jaemin paused, a quite literal breath away, and raised his other hand to softly tuck a strand of hair behind Renjun’s ear, resting it on his neck, slowly thumbing the underside of Renjun’s jaw.

Renjun wondered if the wobbly pace of his heartbeats were the beginning stages of a heart attack, and he briefly wondered if Jaemin could feel it through his skin, because his mind had no space to think about anything else. Jaemin looked from one of his eyes to the other, the hand on Renjun’s wrist creeping up to hold the crook of his elbow, and Renjun felt dizzy, wondering if it was because of the situation or because he had stopped breathing. He never, ever thought he’d one day be so close to Jaemin’s face, no matter the scenarios his brain conjured in his sleep. And the real thing was throughly breathtaking.

When Jaemin’s eyes lowered to his lips, Renjun’s heart gave a painful lurch, and he considered simply grabbing Jaemin by the collar of his t-shirt and putting an end to that particular torture. But as Jaemin’s tongue briefly darted out to wet his lips, Renjun was sure he would faint before that.

“If that’s what he sees,” Jaemin murmured, thumb raising goosebumps on Renjun’s neck “There’s no other explanation for it,” he could feel every word on his skin. He swallowed, and Jaemin breathed in sharply, going completely still for a second. Then, before Renjun could properly register it, Jaemin was fully pulling away, clearing his throat as he threw himself back on the bed. “I think.”

Renjun breathed in, and Jaemin stared at the top bunk, avoiding his eyes. 

What the fuck had just happened.

“Maybe that’s what it is,” his voice was as shaky as his legs as he stood up, discreetly leaning on the closest desk to try regaining balance. “Maybe it’s not. _You_ wouldn’t know,” and Renjun wasn’t sure whether Jaemin even heard him, as there was no answer when he closed the door.

Donghyuck half opened one eye when Renjun slammed their room door open, and then shut. He seemed about to complain, and then paused after looking at Renjun’s face.

“Do I wanna ask?” the question was cautious, and it wasn’t Donghyuck’s fault, but Renjun was sick of any probing and unsolicited opinions, and it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet. So he snapped.

“No,” he aggressively toed his shoes off, hurling his phone towards the desk, where it bounced one time before falling on the floor. Renjun sighed loudly, and heard more than saw Donghyuck turning away, and maybe he should follow suit.

Pulling the covers over his head, Renjun missed lunch hours that Saturday.


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t like Renjun used Donghyuck as his personal free therapist, but it also wasn’t like him to mope for a whole weekend without ever mentioning what he was moping about. When he flipped another page from the textbook with way to much force on Sunday afternoon, Donghyuck decided he had enough.

“Are you gonna break everything you own before talking about what’s making you upset?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Yeah, fuck you too man,” Donghyuck huffed, and Renjun closed his eyes for a second, embarrassed at his outburst. _None of this is Donghyuck’s fault_ , he reminded himself, and after a deep breath, swiveled carefully on his chair.

“It’s just... about Jaemin,” a sigh “Again.”

Donghyuck didn’t answer right away, but his fingers were frozen against the phone screen, clearly thinking about his next words. “About Jaemin? Not Jeno.”

Renjun frowned, but nodded. “Yeah, Jaemin. Why Jeno?” his roommate shrugged, throwing the phone on the bed and properly sitting up.

“You just haven’t brought Jaemin up in a while, is all,” and it sounded like he wanted to say more, but finished at that, looking at Renjun like he was waiting on him to elaborate about the issue at hand first. “So?”

“He almost kissed me,” Donghyuck’s expression turned to shock in a millisecond, casting his neck forward as Renjun scrambled to justify “I mean, I don’t know if that’s what he wanted to do, like, not sure if that was his intention at all, but. We got really, really close to kissing.”

A moment passed, then another. “Aren’t you dating Jeno now?”

“We’re— it’s not something official—”

“So you’re just still hanging out with him to try being close to Jaemin?”

 _No,_ was Renjun’s immediate thought. _Definitely not_ , but that answer would unleash a million little things he purposefully and inadvertently kept to himself about their budding relationship, that he wasn’t entirely ready to face yet.

“Not gonna lie, I just think it’s a bit fucked up that you’re leading him on like that.”

“I’m _not_ leading him on,” but Renjun felt a familiar discomfort in his stomach at the words, and his hands clenched on the desk.

“Is that what you think when you still want to kiss Jaemin?” a sharp intake of breath, and Renjun swallowed his will to cuss Donghyuck out. “I just think it’s hella selfish of you to date Jeno to keep trying to flirt with Jaemin. I actually feel bad for both of them, really, but that’s just my two cents,” Donghyuck shrugged, a curt thing, body language throughly annoyed, and Renjun couldn’t blame him. His roommate had a point, unfortunately — one that Renjun chose to seal in a box and hide it away the moment he felt Jeno’s hug for the first time, on the very same day Jaemin dozed off resting his head on Renjun’s lap, because he didn’t think a person was equipped to feel the things he had and survive unscathed. So he completely avoided the issue, for purely selfish reasons, and was now reaping what he sowed.

Renjun didn’t know if it had anything to do with the tears gathering in his eyes, but the next time Donghyuck spoke he sounded softer, more tired. “This isn’t the call-out you think you are. I want you to be happy doing what makes you happy but, they’re my friends too,” a half smile, Donghyuck’s fingers drumming against the edge of the bed. “I just want you to— sleep on it, ‘kay? It’s long overdue, but it isn’t a change you gotta make overnight.”

Renjun nodded once, twice, a third time, looking at the words in his textbook but not really reading anything. Once he heard Donghyuck settling down on the bed again, Renjun suppressed a sniffle, and excused himself to the bathroom.

He didn’t sleep on it. In fact, he barely waited a full hour after aggressively washing his face twice while crying to rush back into the room and pick up his phone.

_hey_

The answer came right away, and Renjun had to suppress another sniffle at that.

**hey you**

_when are you coming back_

**i’m about to catch the second train actually**

**i’ll be there in 20 minutes. ish?**

**why?**

_i’ll wait for you at the station_

Jeno’s typing bubble appeared then disappeared, then appeared again. Renjun hiccuped.

**mhm that’s good**

**i already miss you**

Renjun threw his phone back on the bed and ran down the corridor to the bathroom again, washing his face for the third time.

Jeno should be arriving on the next train. Renjun swung his feet back and forth on the bench, the station lights above him flickering on as the sun went down. Sunday curfews were slightly earlier than weekdays, but they still had some hours before their dorm parent started making rounds. It was getting too chilly to be out in just a regular jacket, but the heaters next to the bench would only be working the next month.

The automatic voice on the speakers alerted about the train arriving on the northwest platform soon. Renjun had some good forty-five seconds to gather his entire resolve.

When the train came to a halt, it wasn’t hard to spot Jeno out of the grand total of maybe seven people, mostly other students, getting off on that station. It was even easier when his face scrunched up, eyes disappearing into the familiar crescent moons upon spotting Renjun on the bench. He gave a little wave, feeling a sense of misplaced awkwardness he hadn’t felt around Jeno in a long time now.

“Have you been waiting for long?” new tears prickled in Renjun’s eyes as Jeno promptly switched sides of his backpack to offer him a hand. He hesitantly locked his fingers with Jeno’s while standing up.

“Just got here,” and it was quiet, outside the station. The streetlights on the way back to school grounds weren’t on yet, but Jeno looked blinding, smile not leaving his face since the moment he stepped out of the train. Renjun couldn’t stop staring.

“Wanna go for dinner before heading back?” Jeno mistook Renjun’s stare, nudging their connected hands. He shook his head, and Jeno slowed his pace, laughter in his voice. “What’s this for then?”

There were countless better ways to answer that question. Renjun could ask for a minute of Jeno’s time, and properly, fully tell him all that’s been eating him away lately, because he was sure that that, even if Jeno couldn’t understand, he’d still listen. He could also shake his head again, and leave it for another time, when he knew what to say before wondering if it was the right thing fifteen times before saying it. He could slowly tell Jeno in bits and pieces, could let the topic go for good, but at Jeno’s head tilt, Renjun couldn’t take it anymore. Letting go of Jeno’s hand to cup his face, Renjun pressed their lips together.

Surprised for half a second, Jeno stood still. Before Renjun could regret this for his entire life, he raised a bit on his toes, scrunching his eyes close and pressing in again, harder. When he was about to step away and apologize to his past five generations for being such an utter fuck up, he heard the backpack falling on the concrete, and felt Jeno’s hands setting on his waist. Renjun’s eyes flew open at that, and when Jeno leaned in, briefly stopping just before their mouths connected again to look at him, Renjun’s heartbeat faltered.

Kissing Jeno felt exactly like Renjun feared it would feel. He was gentle but insistent, holding Renjun still in place with a comfortable strength that sent shivers down his spine. Lighthearted, too, nuzzling Renjun’s cheek before nibbling his bottom lip, a short smile at the sharp intake of breath, and throughly intoxicating, having him cross his arms behind Jeno’s neck for leverage.

It was only when Jeno moved a hand from Renjun’s back to the crook of Renjun’s neck that he started regaining his senses. Jeno cupped the side of his neck softly, but when he slowly thumbed the underside of his jaw, Renjun felt overwhelmed by the sense of deja vu.

He thought Jeno kissed like Jaemin would.

The misplaced sense of guilt made Renjun turn his face away, breathing hard.

“What’s wrong,” Jeno muttered, still a solid presence around Renjun, and he could clearly see Jeno’s eyebrows knitting slightly without even looking at him. Renjun closed his eyes, head down, fists thumping lightly against Jeno’s chest to let him go. Jeno repeated the question, fingers under Renjun’s chin, and he only lowered his head further, trying to step away. “Jun, talk to me,” Jeno sounded dejected as he loosened his hold and Renjun put two entire steps between them.

“It’s fine,” he picked the backpack up from the ground and raised it to Jeno, still not looking in his eyes. “It’s fine. We better head back soon.”

Jeno took a moment to get his backpack from Renjun, who promptly turned around to keep walking to the dorms. The streetlights were flickering on one by one then, and he felt slightly off balance without Jeno’s hand to hold.

Midterm season was tough enough without being lab partners with the guy he almost kissed, and next row seat mates with the guy he did kiss. And avoiding both.

Renjun didn’t plan it like that. He didn’t plan anything ever, according to Yangyang, but when Jaemin sat on his table Monday morning and Renjun couldn’t even swallow his food, he knew he needed to do something about it.

 _Doing absolutely nothing is not the same as doing something at all_ , he thought at one point, and the berating voice inside his head sounded eerily like Donghyuck’s. He was well aware that ignoring his problems wouldn’t make them go away (he wouldn’t even be in that situation if it did), but he desperately needed to put some distance between himself and those roommates to properly think like a regular human being again.

“This is so weird,” Yangyang had muttered as Renjun returned to his seat after a lab session, pretending he didn’t hear Jaemin call his name. “You’re so weird,” and he could only shrug at that.

The week wasn’t even over before Jaemin cornered him after class.

“This is ridiculous,” and Renjun was right, Jaemin was indeed the type to be colder and snarky when angry. He crossed his arms, and Renjun suppressed the urge to put his feet together and lower his head, like a little kid getting scolded. “So you’re just gonna completely ignore me now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” didn’t sound convincing to his own ears, considering how he’d been acting the past few days. There were dozens of messages read but unanswered in his phone, missed calls and Donghyuck answering their door to say Renjun wasn’t there while he childishly hid behind the bunk beds. He wouldn’t talk to them in class unless it was strictly related to the exercises they were doing, and would rush back to the dorms as soon as the last period bell rang as if he was training for the track and field club. The whole thing was probably a bit more than ridiculous.

Jaemin took a deep breath, uncrossing his arms to run his fingers through his hair in distress, and then cross them again. Renjun didn’t know how he had it in him to find that gesture so devastatingly handsome, considering his situation. “Are you that upset?”

“What?”

“Are you upset that I almost kissed you?” Renjun hurriedly shushed him, looking around to see if there was anyone near. Was Jaemin honestly insane? “So are you?”

“And you’re telling me you knew exactly what you were doing then,” he was mortified by Jaemin being so open and forward while they were in public, but Renjun was still allowed to feel anger at that statement.

Jaemin seemed a bit taken aback at it, arms hesitantly falling beside his body. “I didn’t think you’d be so serious about it.”

Renjun felt like he was running out of air. “So it was a _joke_ to you?” and it was almost like time was suspended at that moment.

There he was, comfortable enough to even have a discussion with his crush of nearly two years in public, when just at the start of the school year he couldn’t even look Jaemin in the eyes. Not only that, but Renjun was also _angry_ at him — and not the hopelessly infatuated, cooing kind where he’d get upset at Jaemin’s general existence for seeming so perfect and unattainable to him. He was seething, wanting nothing more than to punch Jaemin’s square in his surprised face, and keeping that anger up and front in his mind was all Renjun could do to keep himself from breaking down and crying on the spot.

He was angry, very much so, but because he was so utterly devastated he lost his ground for a moment. Admitting to himself he was in love with Jaemin had been such an integral moment in Renjun’s life, that he wasn’t sure what to do with himself at the notion that the singular most important person for him took his affection as joke.

He’d brought it on himself, really. Renjun should’ve kept it a secret from the very beginning, and should’ve waited for it to fade out. It would’ve hurt much less than finding out that, to Jaemin, the idea of wanting Renjun was comical.

“No, that was—”

“Was that funny to you?”

Jaemin sighed, and no, he had absolutely no place there for looking miserable. That was an emotion reserved for Renjun at the moment. “It wasn’t a joke. I meant it so you could realize that the only one you wanted to kiss was Jeno. To make things official.”

“Bullshit,” Renjun spitted. What fucking horrible excuse. “Me and him are more than capable of sorting that out between ourselves, without you meddling.”

“Oh yeah? And what exactly are you sorting by avoiding him like that too?”

“It’s none of your business,” and before Renjun could leave, Jaemin grabbed his wrist, sending the all too familiar pleasant shock all the way up his arm, just like every other time Jaemin touched him. He seriously wanted to cry.

“But it is,” the thing that made the least sense was the desolate look in Jaemin’s eyes when Renjun twisted out of his grasp.

“Why the fuck do you care anyway! It has nothing to do with you!”

Jaemin licked his lips, opening his mouth once, twice, with no sound. Renjun wasn’t about to wait for a third time, but then Jaemin sighed. “I don’t think you’d understand, but I _need_ him to be happy. I’ve never seen him look the way he did when he started getting your letters— he was ready to fall for you before even knowing who you were,” a breath “And, and making sure he would constantly feel like that, that’s the most important thing to me. Above everything else, really, but if it’s so easy for you to throw away all the effort put into getting you two together, and then just fucking _discard_ him like that, and—”

“The letters were for you,” the words tumbled out of his mouth, and Jaemin froze, but he really couldn’t take that anymore.

“What?”

“Those ‘secret admirer’,” his gestures made no sense, but he couldn’t stop talking now “Anonymous love letters, whatever. I wrote them for you, and put in that locker because it was the one I saw you using. I wanted _you_ to know,” a sob broke through Renjun’s throat “That liking you made my days better. They were never meant for Jeno,” and he could feel the warm tears on his cheek, but if he didn’t tell Jaemin all he needed to _now_ , there wouldn’t be another chance. “But that was before I found what a fucking inconsiderate jackass you are, pushing me onto your roommate just because I barely fit whatever grand idea _you_ have for what _you_ think is his happiness,” Jaemin’s face looked slightly distorted through Renjun’s swimming vision, but he didn’t think he’d want to see it clearly at all. He didn’t want to know how badly his words would be received. “I just hope you realize that Jeno can pick himself what he thinks is better for him, and that you really shouldn’t try to ‘mediate’ his relationship, because if I were someone else, what you did on Saturday would’ve ruined it.”

Renjun couldn’t stand Jaemin’s silence, couldn’t stand not being properly able to see his face to decipher said silence, couldn’t stand that Jaemin now had probably nothing else to say to him, couldn’t stand that he was crying in public, or that he was crying in public in front of his long-time crush, and most importantly, couldn’t stand that he was crying in public in front of his long-time crush and the guy didn’t have it within himself to somehow try consoling Renjun.

The thought of a rumor spreading around the dorm that the common bathroom on the east wing of the third floor was haunted because of Renjun’s crying on the last stall was the only thing that had brought a smile to his face in the past half hour. A short lived one, though, as air went down the wrong pipe and Renjun found himself wheezing instead of laughing, wet coughs bringing extra tears to his face.

He was a mess.

The last extracurriculars of the day should be done soon, and Renjun wouldn’t be able to cry in peace for much longer as the dorm started to fill up. He should at least stabilize his breathing, wash his face, and leave before any more crying sounds ended up gathering an audience by the bathroom’s door. It was just that Renjun felt he needed some kind of Herculean strength to do that.

It was all over. Done. Renjun’s first actual crush, as well as his first semblance of a real relationship, because there’d be no way in hell that Jeno would want anything to do with him anymore after Jaemin told the full story. It wasn’t like Renjun wasn’t already on his merry way to destroying that particular relationship when he kissed Jeno just to essentially ghost him right after, but it was a whole other thing to acknowledge the finality of it. He hiccuped.

Rubbing his face against the ruined sleeve of his uniform, Renjun rested his back against the toilet, looking dejectedly at the ceiling. _What a fucking drama queen,_ Donghyuck would say if he saw him in that state, and Renjun chuckled.

“Injun?” and maybe he needed therapy, because the snarky voice in his head that tended to sound like Donghyuck’s felt almost like the real thing for a moment. Renjun stopped breathing, waiting for the voice a second time, to check whether he was really hearing things, but there was only silence in the bathroom. But then, “Injun?” and the knock on the stall’s door made Renjun almost jump out of his skin.

“Hyuck?” God, Renjun’s voice was a mess, too. He tried clearing his throat and asking again, but it croaked just the same the second time.

“Injun, do you... do you wanna talk?”

“Was I crying that loud?” his laughter was dry, and Donghyuck went silent for a moment.

“Not actually, no. But I noticed your shoes, and then I heard the sniffling.”

“Great.”

“Well, hm,” Renjun wasn’t sure if Donghyuck was flustered at his roommate opening crying, or if there actually was an audience by the bathroom’s door, because he only spoke hesitantly like that when near people he wasn’t close to. It was weird, finding a situation where Donghyuck didn’t feel confident enough to argue. Renjun made a mental note to never cry where his roommate could see again. “It’s just, if you wanna rant, I’m here to listen?”

A moment, then another. “I think it’s over. No, I’m pretty sure it’s over.”

“What is?”

“Everything,” a breath “It’s all over, and I’m a fuck up, and I’ll end up alone,” another hiccup, and he’d be damned if it actually turned into another sob, and he cried in front of his roommate again. How the hell were there even any more tears in his system. “And, I mean, it’s all my fault. Nothing I do will even matter because there’s no fixing, anyway.”

“Don’t you wanna, hm. Maybe leave the stall first before trying to fix anything?”

“No,” he hiccuped, but the stifled laughter on the other side of the door was decidedly _not_ Donghyuck’s. “I swear to God if Yangy—” the word died in Renjun’s mouth as he opened the stall’s door. Jeno was leaning against the sink, the only other person in the bathroom besides Donghyuck. Renjun snapped his head towards his roommate.

“Okay, I can explain, I—”

“He sent me a message,” Jeno pushed himself off the sink “Because he thought he saw you crying, and that you probably wouldn’t talk to him about it.”

Renjun was going to kill Donghyuck. That was absolutely final. “Did he.”

“Jun,” Jeno stepped in front of Renjun, and he felt less homicidal for a moment, too busy processing the fact that it was the first time he allowed himself to look into Jeno’s eyes in almost a week. When his brain provided the fun addition that he probably wouldn’t be able to do much of that after Jeno and Jaemin had a talk, Renjun’s vision started swimming again. “It’s fine,” he muttered, opening his arms. “You’re okay now.”

It wasn’t a question, but Renjun nodded anyway, new tears falling with every downwards motion of his head, and slowly stepped into Jeno’s personal space, forehead resting under Jeno’s chin. He really wasn’t physically capable of crying anymore, but Renjun couldn’t stop hiccuping as Jeno closed his arms around him, soothingly running a hand up and down Renjun’s back, cheek pressed against the side of Renjun’s head.

Jeno led Renjun out of the dorm, to the half secluded benches on the lawn right behind the building, and didn’t say anything. Renjun sat still, knees pulled up against his chest and head resting against the crook of Jeno’s neck for what felt like forever. It didn’t take long for him to calm down, one of Jeno’s hands softly combing his hair, and the other making lazy circles on his knees, and Renjun’s mind felt pleasantly empty. He’d have surely dozed off like that, if it wasn’t for the alarm on Jeno’s phone reminding them of the curfew.

He accepted one, and then two of Jeno’s gentle kisses, and maybe by the fifth it was Renjun who leaned in first, before they headed inside.

“Oh to be young and in love,” Donghyuck joked, tentative, when Renjun closed their door. At the sliver of a smile, his roommate sat up on the bed. “So it was actually love problems? You and Jeno looked fine to me though?”

Renjun shook his head. “It wasn’t because of Jeno,” not entirely, at least. Donghyuck hummed, watching Renjun search for his pajamas for a moment.

“But it was Jeno who you wanted there with you, wasn’t it?”

 _Not only,_ Renjun thought, but his head hurt too much from all his crying to try dissecting that.

Midterms had come and gone, Chenle had begged them to not throw the study guides away until he could collect them after finals, and the entire school atmosphere seemed to shift, much like the weather. With a big chunk of their grades already secured (or beyond salvation), everyone seemed to switch gears and start focusing more on the extracurriculars. Renjun knew through Yangyang that the sports clubs would begin to have away games soon, and in choir they were about to choose new section leaders in preparation for the concert rehearsals.

The volunteering club was put on a halt for the exams, but Jeno was excited to sort out through the new requests coming from all over the city, and to start working at the cat café as a part-timer instead of occasional volunteer. All of that would come after the four day weekend the school gave them as soon as midterms were done, and just thinking about it was enough to make Renjun blush.

“Why’s his face like that,” Chenle sat down next to Donghyuck during dinner, still in his basketball uniform. Renjun scowled at that, and Chenle laughed. “Now that’s more like you.”

“It’s called a smile you dipshit,” he stole some of Chenle’s fries in retaliation. “And I’m free to do that whenever I want.”

“Alright Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, what’s got you smiling at your cold mashed potatoes like that?” Chenle seemed to not notice the look Renjun and Donghyuck shared, too busy counting the number of fries remaining on his plate.

“I’m going out of town for the long weekend,” he tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, and Chenle didn’t even look up.

“Nice. Bring me souvenirs,” Donghyuck slapped Chenle upside the head.

“He’s going out of town, not out of the country,” and Chenle might’ve muttered something along the lines of ‘same difference’, but Renjun wasn’t really paying attention anymore. “Damn. That’s really disgusting, actually,” Donghyuck grimaced, and Chenle’s high pitched laughter cut through Renjun’s daydreams. “Like, I actually get what he’s saying. Don’t smile at the napkins like that, Injun,” and he flinched away before Renjun could even reach his collar, laughing.

Why should Renjun have to contain his expression, honestly? He was about to spend three nights and four days at the house of the guy he was dating. In his place, anyone else would feel the same way. _You’re meeting the parents already?!_ Lucas had essentially body slammed Mark out of his chair to claim the phone. _Dude, that’s like, so much responsibility,_ he continued, over Mark’s complaints from the floor, but that was an entirely new issue that Jeno had assured him they wouldn’t need to tackle over the weekend. _I don’t think his parents know,_ had been Renjun’s answer. _Besides, we’re not that serious yet._

But by God, he wanted them to be. He wanted when Jeno blushed while asking him about his plans for the long weekend. He wanted when Jeno video called home, not for Renjun to meet his parents, but for him to introduce Renjun to his cats instead. He wanted every time Jeno would lean in a bit too close during class, and Renjun’s heart would skip a beat from how much we wanted to close that distance, even in public. He wanted at every smile and at every skin brush, and sometimes, he wasn’t entirely sure why he thought couldn’t have it.

And then he’d be reminded.

“Oh, it’s just you two boys?” Jeno’s mother was an incredibly sweet and soft-spoken lady, ushering them inside as she wiped her hands on the apron, going over what she had prepared for lunch. “When you said someone new was tagging along, I thought you meant besides Jaemin, honey.”

There it was. Jeno only glanced at Renjun for half a second, before saying something about how Jaemin had already made plans with someone else that time. The glance wasn’t long enough, or worrying enough for Renjun to think Jeno knew about anything Jaemin and Renjun had talked about. Which, was still incredibly unsettling in Renjun’s eyes.

A little over a week had passed since that day, but nothing about the way Jeno acted suggested that Jaemin had talked to him about it. He just couldn’t believe someone who would keep such a thing to himself actually existed, but hell, Renjun wasn’t even sure Jaemin had ever said Renjun was the author of the love letters to Jeno in the first place.

There were no lab sessions in the week leading to, or the week of midterms. Renjun also completely avoided Jeno and Jaemin’s room, and Jaemin hadn’t tried contacting him through messages or in person, so the last time they had spoken was that disastrous afternoon.

It turned out to not be the closure Renjun was expecting.

He wasn’t really under the impression that everything he’d ever felt for Jaemin would simply disappear by the very next morning, but he also wasn’t prepared for the intensity of his feelings to not change in the slightest, and whenever something made him think about it while with Jeno, it was as good a reminder as any for why he couldn’t bring himself to officially be with him like he so wanted to.

Like when Renjun put a pillow on the futon set next to the bed, and Jeno laughed. “What,” but he ended up laughing along “What did I do?”

Jeno rolled on the bed over to the side Renjun’s futon was. “You’re saying you’d rather sleep there than up here with me?” Jeno mockingly raised an eyebrow, and Renjun threw the pillow on his face.

“Your mom put this here for me,” he shrugged as Jeno sniffled, and kept the pillow to himself. “Won’t she suspect anything if we sleep in the same bed?”

A moment passed, and Jeno scratched the back of his neck, before sitting by the edge of the bed. “She just put it there because my bed doesn’t fit three people. And... Jaemin sleeps— on the bed, I mean, on my bed, whenever he comes here.”

“Oh,” was all Renjun could answer, and they fell silent for a moment again. Clearing his throat, Renjun stood up, rolling the futon towards the corner of the room, and promptly jumping belly first onto Jeno’s bed. “Then, don’t mind if I do,” he teased, muffling his laughter against the mattress when Jeno climbed over his back and started playfully sniffing his neck as an answer.

It was hard to avoid thinking about Jaemin when he was etched into almost every corner of Jeno’s life. As a smiley toddler in Jeno’s family photo albums, in the extra dishes Jeno’s mom prepared out of habit because they were Jaemin’s favorites, in the vacation stories Jeno’s dad would tell over dinner. In the extra sweaters and shoes kept in Jeno’s closet, because Jaemin always found carrying full backpacks a hassle whenever he visited. In Jeno’s parents saying they were going for a friend’s gathering at Jaemin’s parents’ house, and probably even spending the night there. In the colorful earphones with the letters JM written with sharpie on the headband, carefully folded inside the first drawer of Jeno’s desk, in the set of throw pillows in the living room that Jaemin had gifted them some Christmas, in the pretty yellow flowers Jaemin had planted himself on the garden outside.

In the open, empty messaging chat Renjun caught Jeno absentmindedly staring in his phone, fingers hovering over the keyboard, only to lock the phone with a sigh without having written anything. The weight in Renjun’s heart felt somewhat heavier over Jeno’s very obvious struggle than it had over his own.

He closed the bathroom door and Jeno looked up from the bed, eyes downcast until he met Renjun’s.

“Come,” Jeno tapped the space next to him on the bed, and dutifully picked up the towel around Renjun’s shoulders as Renjun sat down, back facing him. “I’m not gonna be responsible for you catching a cold here,” and any other time, Jeno’s gentle hands drying his hair might’ve been enough to distract Renjun from all other things, but there was just too much _Jaemin_ everywhere to be distracted.

“I wrote those letters to Jaemin,” Jeno’s hands stilled on his hair. With a deep breath, Renjun continued. “I didn’t know it wasn’t his locker.”

“Did... Jaemin know?” Jeno sounded much calmer than Renjun expected, and for some reason it made him feel calm too, tight shoulders dropping.

“Yeah. That I was the one who wrote them, I mean. He thought they were meant for you. Only recently I told him they weren’t.”

There was a long moment of silence before Jeno resumed drying Renjun’s hair. “Mhm,” he chuckled “I thought it was super out of character that the guy who was always pissed off in class suddenly asked me out at a cat café,” and Renjun turned around at that, offended.

“I’m not always pissed off in class!” Jeno shook his head, lowering the towel to massage Renjun’s ears, surely turning pink.

“But you are,” Jeno cupped Renjun’s face with the towel to give him a quick peck on the lips. “And it’s okay, because you’re cute.”

And Renjun wanted to be genuinely shocked by Jeno’s entire (lack of) reaction, but the happy eye-smile on his face only allowed him to feel fondness. “How are you not upset about this?”

Jeno hummed, balling the towel to throw it in the laundry basket from the bed. “Upset about what? That you have a crush on Jaemin,” it fell flat on the floor, not nearly close. “When I’m pretty sure I do too?”

There were many reactions Renjun had expected to see, and many things he expected to hear too, but none were even _remotely_ similar to what Jeno had just said, and he suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to kiss him silly. Which he would have, if the doorbell hadn’t rang.

Jeno frowned, slightly opening his curtain to look outside as the doorbell rang again. There was only the light rain beyond the window, and no signs of any car headlights in the quiet street for it to be Jeno’s parents.

“They can’t be back yet,” he voiced out Renjun’s thoughts, as the doorbell rang two more times in quick succession. Jeno looked questioningly at Renjun, who only shrugged, similarly bewildered. He climbed out of the bed and headed towards the corridor, Renjun following closely behind, the doorbell still ringing and ringing and ringing again.

“What the fuck,” Renjun breathed as Jeno looked through the peephole.

“What the fuck indeed,” and that was the most shocked Renjun heard Jeno sound the entire evening, but he quickly understood why, when the door opened to Jaemin with his hand raised to press the doorbell again, soaked to the bones.

“Hi,” he smiled, as if that scene was nothing out of the ordinary. Jeno and Renjun shared a look. “Your parents came over for dinner.”

“I know,” and it sounded like a question. Jaemin bounced lightly on his feet at the threshold.

“They said you and Injunnie,” Jaemin swallowed visibly “Stayed in. So,” he quickly raised a finger just as Jeno opened his mouth to speak again. “I thought to myself, what better opportunity than this, right,” Jaemin laughed nervously, and Renjun thought he looked halfway insane.

“Jaemin what are you even talking ab—”

“This,” Jaemin started loudly “Is probably gonna sound insane. Completely bonkers, batshit crazy. I know, I know, I tried saying it out loud before and I know how it sounds too,” he cleared his throat. “So. It would be like, really great to me if you could listen to the whole thing, and then— I mean, I don’t know what then,” a breath “But it would be super neat if you just let me say it.”

They stood completely still in front of Jaemin, and Renjun had the urge to ask Jeno if that was really the guy worth having two people crushing on.

“Thing is. I’ve liked Jeno for a while,” Renjun heard a sharp intake of breath from Jeno “But kind of every time I look at Renjun, I want to kiss him,” eyes going comically wide, Jaemin quickly shook his hands. “Not that I don’t also want to kiss Jeno. Because I do. A probably unhealthy amount,” Jaemin’s eyes bounced between Jeno and Renjun, and Renjun wondered just what kind of expression was on his face. “But Renjun is also— and none of that makes any sense, and I completely understand if neither of you ever want to talk to me again, but,” Jaemin’s voice broke at that “I’m going to be absolutely miserable for a very long time if you two become an official thing without me. But that’s,” a shaky breath “That’s basically it.”

Dizzy, Renjun was dizzy. It was the first time he looked Jaemin in the eyes in almost two weeks, and though the last time had also been about him trying to — wanting to? — kiss Renjun, the emotions now involved were vastly different. Anger was still part of it, primarily because something like that if said earlier could have spared Renjun from all the probable stress grey hairs on his head, but it was severely overshadowed by the massive, unfiltered sense of joy clouding all of Renjun’s senses. He was dizzy.

He looked up at Jeno for a moment, an amused expression of a person enjoying a particularly good show. Renjun sighed, long and dramatic, to try covering up his will to smile until his cheeks broke from it.

“Let’s dry you up first,” Renjun dragged Jaemin inside, hand firm on his damp wrist. Jeno nodded, closing the door behind them.

“We can figure the rest out later,” _together_ was implicit in Jeno’s voice, and Renjun couldn’t help smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW this was quite a long one. hello you!! thank you for getting here. 
> 
> hopefully you had fun with this <3 it’s one of the longest things i’ve posted so far, and even if i like writing slice of life, this fic surprised me by just /how much/ i actually like to write it. find me making a whole self indulgent grocery store arc next
> 
> i’d love love love to hear what you thought of it, through the comments or dropping by on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mxtchxlatte) <3
> 
> anyway, this is also my first time in a fic fest and the whole thing was incredibly new and interesting to me. thank you to the mod for making it happen!!


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